Pope versus Woodsworth

William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland in the Lake District. His father was John Wordsworth who served as the attorney for Lord Lonsdale. Wordsworth's understanding of the human mind seems simple enough today, what with the advent of psycholanalysis and the general Freudian acceptance of the importance of childhood in the adult psyche. But in Wordsworth's time, in what Seamus Heaney has called "Dr. Johnson's supremely adult eighteenth century," it was shockingly unlike anything that had been proposed before. Wordsworth believed (as he expressed in poems such as the "Intimations of Immortality" Ode) that, upon being born, human beings move from a perfect, idealized realm into the imperfect, un-ideal earth. As children, some memory of the former purity and glory in which they lived remains, best perceived in the solemn and joyous relationship of the child to the beauties of nature. But as children grow older, the memory fades, and the magic of nature dies. Still, the memory of childhood can offer an important solace, which brings with it almost a kind of re-access to the lost purities of the past. And the maturing mind develops the capability to understand nature in human terms, and to see in it metaphors for human life, which compensate for the loss of the direct connection. Pope turned to writing verse in early adolescence, having read widely in classical, French, English, and some Italian literature.

An early poem, which he sent to Henry Cromwell in 1709, made him known to a number of established writers; they encouraged him to seek a publisher for his Pastorals, written when he was sixteen and published in 1709. The resultant friendships caused him thereafter to spend much time in London. He never married, and while he had close woman friends, particularly Martha Blount, he almost surely ...