Imperial Anxieties, Virgilian Resolutions:
On the Function of Historical Consciousness
in Alexander Pope’s “Windsor Forest”
Although early critics of Alexander Pope’s “Windsor Forest” tend to characterize the political bent of the poem as more or less consistently Jacobite, falling within the wide tradition of many early eighteenth-century panegyrics celebrating the Peace of Utrecht and indulging in Tory sycophantism, contemporary analysts have lent the greater portion of their focus to the diverse contradictions and inconsistencies with respect to Pope’s political attitudes and anxieties as variously evinced throughout the poem. Though “Windsor Forest” has been occasionally denounced as politically incoherent, many contemporary critics have engaged with and expanded upon the highly influential analysis of Earl Wasserman in The Subtler Language (1979) which identifies Pope’s couplet, “Where order in variety we see,/ And where, though all things differ, all agree,” as providing an interpretive key to the politics and aesthetics of the poem as a whole (ll. 15-16). Pope’s invocation of this Ovidian philosophy of concordia discors at the outset of “Windsor Forest” undoubtedly serves the reconciliation, though often ambiguously, of many of the poem’s political tensions. However, as scholar Juan Christian Pellicer has observed, Pope’s poem “both courts and resists political allegorical readings,” and contemporary critics have displayed a “tendency to overextend the explicatory power of discordia concors” (Pellicer 468).
Ultimately, Pope’s ability to poetically resolve the contradictory and ostensibly irreconcilable political perspectives contained in “Windsor Forest” seems derived as much of his deft employment of concordia discors as of a deep historical and literary consciousness. The elaborate metaphorical architecture of Britain’s mythic past which Pope constructs in the first half of “Windsor Forest,” for instance, relies extensively on historical parallels drawn between eighteenth-century Britain and Roman antiquity. Throughout the entire poem, Pope identifies, if often implicitly, the prospect of a “golden age” of the British Empire under the Stuart regime of Queen Anne with the Pax Romana established during the reign of Octavian in the Augustan age of Rome. Pope’s frequent imitation of Virgil (as well as a number of other Augustan poets) throughout “Windsor Forest” in conjunction with his repurposing of distinctly Virgilian rhetorical maneuvers and poetic devices also seems a significant contributing factor in the poem’s final resolution of political tensions. In tracing out a number of the historical parallels which Pope constructs throughout the poem and briefly situating Pope’s concluding lines alongside those from book four of Virgil’s Georgics, the political anxieties and inconsistencies of “Windsor Forest” seem to become entirely comprehensible.
Among the first and most general historical parallels elaborated within the poem, Pope develops an extended metaphor of hunting as an analogue for national history (ll.43-170). Notably, this episode contains a striking number of conflicting rhetorical movements: temporal oscillations between past, present, and future; descriptive transitions from the sylvan beauty of country landscapes to the decimation of British towns and infrastructure during the civil wars of the seventeenth century; troubling shifts in perspective between oppressor and oppressed, hunter and hunted; and the ultimate relocation of violence as a phenomenon internal to Britain to a force which operates principally on the fringes of the empire. Although these movements might be rightly attributed to the function of the poem’s concordia discors, Pope’s consciousness of Roman history also seems a significant factor in illuminating the complex operation of such poetic tensions. For instance, midway through this hunting episode, Pope effects a temporary break from his predominantly metaphorical language—signaled by the phrase “Thus (if small things we may with great compare),” a line lifted directly from book four of Virgil’s georgics (ll.105). This moment in “Windsor Forest” seems to constitute an implicit attempt to identify eighteenth-century Britain with the Augustan age of Rome through marking Britain’s political transition from nation to empire. Although prior to these lines Pope describes at length the history of England’s internal conflicts, as the poem continues, violence becomes increasingly externalized, transformed into a force of imperial expansion:
“When Albion sends her eager sons to war,
Some thoughtless town, with ease and plenty blessed,
Near, and more near, the closing lines invest;
Sudden they seize the’ amazed, defenseless prize,
And high in air Brittania’s standard flies” (ll.106-110).
Pope’s maneuver surrounding this passage implicitly relates Britain’s current historical moment to the ascension of Octavian following the dissolution of the Second Triumvirate and the subsequent defeat of Marc Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. As Pope himself would have been well aware as a poet in the tradition of neoclassicism, Octavian’s reign effectively marked the conclusion of the two decades of civil war which followed the assassination of Caesar, ushering in an era which historians now refer to as the Pax Romana—something of a misnomer, as the period was characterized by both internal political stability and a lengthy succession of wars on the Roman frontiers. Within this particular passage, Pope’s consciousness of Roman history seems to manifest itself as an anxiety about empire; his application of the adjectives “thoughtless,” “amazed,” and “defenseless” to the captured town seem to betray a sense of hesitation in praising an internal peace which comes at the cost of foreign blood. As scholar David B. Morris has observed, “Windsor Forest says little about the victories of war: what scant praise of conquest there is Pope calculates to evoke ‘uneasiness’ in the reader” (Morris 243). Importantly, immediately succeeding this passage, Pope’s violent, lurid descriptions concerning the deaths of various animals at the hands of hunters seems to echo this uneasiness within the confines of allegorical language.
Since such a historical connection might seem initially vague or tenuous, another passage within this hunting episode of “Windsor Forest” warrants examination. Toward the conclusion of this section, Pope explicitly identifies Queen Anne with the Roman goddess Diana, the divine arbiter of the forest, “the Lady of Wild Things”, and the “huntsman-in-chief to the gods” (Hamilton, 27). Although such a connection perfectly serves Pope’s metaphor of the hunt, this association of Queen Anne with a divine figure (as well as with her Renaissance predecessor, Elizabeth I) mimics Octavian’s historical association with the divinity of Mars and of his adoptive father Caesar. Crucially, Pope also assigns to Anne the appellation of “empress,” establishing a fairly explicit connection with Octavian as the first emperor and founder of the Roman Empire. Pope writes,
“Let old Arcadia boast her spacious plain,
The immortal huntress, and her virgin train;
Nor envy, Windsor! since thy shades have seen
As bright a goddess, and as chaste a queen;
Whose care, like hers, protects the sylvan reign,
The earth’s fair light, and empress of the main” (ll. 159-164).
Worthy of note, Pope’s conflation a Greek location, Arcadia, with a Roman goddess, Diana (ll. 165), does not seem to trouble or complicate a reading of “Windsor Forest” as deeply conscious of Roman history specifically; rather, this fusion of Greek and Roman traditions, common in much poetry of the period, reflects the early eighteenth century as a bizarre, meta-historical moment in which British historiography and culture seeks to identify itself with Augustan Rome identifying itself with Hellenistic Greece. However, Pope’s employment of the phrase “empress of the main” is perhaps the most notable feature of this passage, allowing for the construction of a parallel between Queen Anne and Octavian as well as gesturing toward a crucial difference which Pope foresees as able to set the British and Roman empires apart in terms of imperial success and longevity.
The symbolic groundwork for the elucidation of this difference—undoubtedly a product of Pope’s consciousness of Roman history—appears within the introductory stanzas of “Windsor Forest” wherein Pope adopts the entire Roman pantheon on behalf of Britain, relocating the terrestrial seat of divine arbitration from Mount Olympus to Windsor Forest: “Not proud Olympus yields a nobler sight,/ Though gods assembled grace his tow’ring height,/ Than what more humble mountains offer here,/ Where, in their blessings, all those gods appear” (ll. 33-36). Pope later posits Neptune as patron god of the British Empire and head of this “British” pantheon, designating the Thames River as the most honored and wealthiest recipient of the ocean-god’s tribute (ll. 223-226). To exemplify the utter ubiquity of this Romanization of British history throughout the period, historian Lawrence James describes an ornate classical portrait which symbolically details the development of Britain’s naval superiority amongst the other nations of Europe during the early eighteenth century:
“On the ceiling above the main staircase of the Commissioner’s House at Chattham Dockyard is a large painting set there in about 1705. It is baroque in style and triumphant in mood; Mars receives a crown of shells from Neptune, while, in the foreground, stand symbolic figures of Peace, Plenty, Justice and Charity. The whole piece is an allegory of Britain, a prosperous, just and Christian nation which thrives under the protection of the ruler of the oceans” (James 51).
Although Pope’s poetic rendering of Neptune’s divine patronage reflects a fairly common period conception of the nature of Imperial Britain, this feature of “Windsor Forest” allows for the symbolic alleviation of Pope’s aforementioned anxieties about frontier wars as a principal means of imperial expansion. Beneath the aegis of Neptune, Britain might extend the empire’s borders via markedly more peaceful methods, namely commercial trade and the consequent attainment of dominion over the world’s economic systems. Ultimately, Pope’s adoption of Neptune as patron god of Britain not only establishes another parallel with Rome’s Augustan age, but allows for the creation of a conceptual poetic framework in which the British might exceed the grandeur and magnanimity of the Romans, flourishing in the absence of circumstances which caused the Roman Empire to weaken and decline.
That said, a brief review of Octavian’s reign—a history with which Pope would have been intimately familiar—might clarify the poignancy of Pope’s selection of Neptune as champion of Windsor Forest’s “British” pantheon. By contrast with the Lord of the Sea, Octavian adopted Mars as the patron God of his regime. The elaborate complex in which Octavian constructed his personal forum, a precedent established by Caesar, “culminated in The Temple of Mars the Avenger” (Grant 261). This not only served to signify that in seizing control of the Roman State and vanquishing Caesar’s betrayers Octavian had avenged his adoptive father’s assassination and thereby won the favor and patronage of Mars; the conjoining temple also symbolically established that conquest and war would serve as Octavian’s principal means of furthering the divinely ordained expansion of Imperial Rome. Although regional trade constituted a significant component of Augustan Rome’s unprecedented expansion, as Historian Michael Grant notes,
“…neither at this nor at any later period of antiquity did trading ever become the economic basis for the Roman world, for it could never achieve really large dimensions … the manufacturers showed so little interest in productive expansion [and] the technological advances required to achieve it” (Grant 266).
Rather, Rome’s expansion during the 41 years of Octavian’s reign was largely sustained by conquest and plunder at the periphery of the empire in conjunction with the immense agricultural production of Roman territories in Egypt and of provinces on the Italian peninsula. As such unmitigated growth maintained by such an economic structure left the empire vulnerable to draught, famine, civil unrest, and rebellion, the Roman State of these “golden years” quickly deteriorated following Octavian’s death in 14 AD. Owing to inherent structural vulnerabilities and hastened by the misrule of Octavian’s dynastic successors, including Caligula and Nero, the empire was from the start set upon an inexorable path of decline, culminating in the Crisis of the Third Century and the eventual collapse of Rome as an imperial power.
Pope’s selection of Neptune as patron god of the British Empire might therefore suggest an attempt to distance Britain from the fate of Rome by placing an emphasis on commerce over warfare as a principal means of imperial expansion and maintenance—a poetic gesture to thwart the cyclicality of history. Notably, however, Pope names Neptune only once in “Windsor Forest;” not until the penultimate episode of the poem, wherein the deified Thames River, speaking as a British greater-than-Neptune, prophesies the future of the empire, does the predominance and influence of the ocean-god over Imperial Britain become explicitly clear. Crucially, Pope achieves the greatest sense of distance between eighteenth-century Britain and Augustan Rome through this reconstruction of Neptune as a uniquely British deity: “old father Thames.” The various, triumphant prognostications offered by Father Thames also underscore the differences which Pope perceived or anticipated between the British and Roman empires: Britain would serve as a proselytizing force for the truth of Christianity; Britain would attain complete dominion over the world’s oceans; and the entire globe, rather than a comparatively small portion of it, would ultimately become unified beneath the aegis of British rule. Father Thames declares,
“Thy trees, fair Windsor! now shall leave their woods,
And half thy forests rush into my floods,
Bear Britain’s thunder, and her cross display,
To the bright regions of the rising day…
The time shall come, when free as seas or wind
Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind,
Whole nations enter with each swelling tide,
And seas but join the regions they divide” (ll.385-388, 397-400).
Critics have often described the tone of this passage as unambiguously laudatory, noting that Pope’s emphasis seems to “[fall] entirely on the pacific and commercial aspects of British maritime expansion” (Pellicer 481). However, Pope’s 1712 draft of “Windsor Forest” employed the phrase “bloody cross” in line 387, revealing a revision both significant and telling with respect to Pope’s troubled political perspective. This earlier edition as well as the ultimate redaction of the phrase in question seems to betray this moment in the poem as deeply involved with a sense of anxiety about the violent nature of imperialism, the inevitability of frontier wars, and the potential consequences of Britain’s imposition of its fundamentally religious ideology upon its future imperial subjects. Ultimately, Pope’s employment of Father Thames as a British analogue for Neptune serves to connect eighteenth-century Britain and Augustan Rome through the articulation of a perceived difference and superiority in British imperial policy and program (i.e. commerce versus conquest).
At this juncture in my analysis, a question may arise as to why Alexander Pope, in a poem which purports to celebrate the Peace of Utrecht, undertakes such an effort to construct historical parallels which concern more or less general aspects of the regimes of Queen Anne and Caesar Augustus. Recalling the circumstances surrounding the publication of “Windsor Forest,” the generality of the poem’s panegyric elements should not seem surprising. “Windsor Forest” was first published on March 7th, 1713, a date which both precedes the ratification of the Utrecht treaty by some three weeks and marks the eve of the anniversary of Queen Anne’s ascension (Pellicer 456). Pope himself noted that the first half of the poem had been composed in 1704 at the same time as his pastorals, ostensibly the principal reason why critics have tended to view “Windsor Forest” as compositionally and politically divided. In the absence of Pope’s testimony, however, a precise midpoint which separates these two halves of the poem might not be readily or definitively identifiable. With these considerations in mind, that Pope’s poem celebrates the ascension of Queen Anne as marking the inauguration of a “golden age” as well as the transition from nation to empire, as opposed to a specific political event, seems an entirely reasonable assertion.
Directly preceding the Father Thames episode of “Windsor Forest,” for instance, Pope inserts a brief stanza which draws a host of parallels concerning the historical circumstances surrounding the coronation of Anne and the ascension of Octavian. The passage serves to emphasize the object of Pope’s approbation as the entire Stuart regime, as opposed to the ratification of the Utrecht treaty, which throughout the whole of the poem remains conspicuously absent. Pope writes,
“Make sacred Charles’ tomb forever known,
(Obscure the place, and uninscribed the stone).
Oh fact accursed! What tears Albion has shed,
Heav’ns! What new wounds, and how her old have bled?
Saw her sons with purple deaths expire,
Her sacred domes involved in rolling fire,
A dreadful series of intestine wars,
Inglorious triumphs and dishonest scars.
At length great ANNA said—‘Let Discord cease!’
She said, the world obeyed, and all was peace!” (ll..319-328).
As intimated in the stanza’s introductory lines, the implicit connections between Charles I and Julius Caesar seem readily apparent: both men were executed as tyrants; the remains of both were irreverently dismembered and subsequently interred in unmarked graves (Suetonius 41-42); and both figures were respectively canonized and deified—later venerated and remembered, somewhat paradoxically, as national martyrs. Pope also here describes and condemns the decades of civil war which marred the interval between the death of Charles I and the ascent of Queen Anne, a period of political instability which also characterized the interval between Caesar’s assassination and Octavian’s rise to power. Crucially, line 324 seems to reference the destruction of religious infrastructure which resulted as a consequence of the disestablishment of the Anglican Church during the turbulent years of the Puritan Interregnum. Although the line might refer specifically to the Great Fire of London in 1666, other passages within “Windsor Forest” resonate poignantly with the other, aforementioned connotation (ll. 67-70, for example). Also noteworthy, in the first stanza of Father Thames’ prophecy, the river-god declares “Behold! Augusta’s glitt’ring spires increase,/ and temples rise, the beauteous works of peace” (ll. 377-378). Recalling that among the most celebrated components of Octavian’s legacy was the restoration and reconstruction of Rome’s dilapidated religious infrastructure, Pope seems here to establish another highly specific, if implicit parallel between the reign of Queen Anne and that of Caesar’s revered successor. Queen Anne’s declaration in lines 327 and 328, unmistakably autocratic in tone, seems to solidify the connection: the ascent of both monarchs marked the end of a long period of civil wars and ushered in eras of relative peace and prosperity. Throughout “Windsor Forest,” Pope so relentlessly associates Queen Anne with the idea of peace that a number of critics have noted that the term “peace” as it appears throughout the poem might be read as a surrogate for Anne herself. By comparison, Octavian was historically so associated with idea of peace that the terms Pax Romana and Pax Augustus in both past and contemporary scholarship are essentially interchangeable.
Having traced out a number of diverse historical parallels in Pope’s poem, it seems an apt maneuver to gesture toward closing this analysis by remarking that Pope’s consciousness of Roman history within the confines of “Windsor Forest” extends far beyond historical events, encompassing also much literature of the Augustan period. The influence of Horace can be easily detected in terms of the poem’s inherent patriotism. Pope’s deft and thorough employment of concordia discors smacks of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The significance of Virgil to Pope’s poetry manifests itself so sweepingly throughout “Windsor Forest” as to be almost obvious. Indeed, many historians and critics have already observed Pope’s immense esteem for the poetry of Virgil, especially in the early years of his poetic career. However, all throughout his life, Pope revered the Roman poet to such an extent that he used “a handsome Elzevir Virgil, just as many families used the Bible, to record the names of his departed relations and friends” (Morris 231). Critics have extensively examined various passages in “Windsor Forest” as imitations of Virgil, borrowing heavily from the Eclogues and the Georgics as well as from The Aeneid.
However, the most significant Virgilian moment contained in Pope’s poem appears in the closing lines. Both the conclusion of “Windsor Forest” and that of book four of the Georgics serve to close their respective poems with a moment of sphragis wherein both Pope and Virgil acknowledge their careers as poets as facilitated by the relatively peaceful regimes of their respective monarchs. Yet, both poets express some degree of anxiety about the nature and future of the empires in which they find themselves situated, and ultimately, in self-effacing poetic gestures which recall their early work as pastoral poets, reserve judgment on that account and defer the prerogative of judgment to future generations. In producing the two passages alongside one another, Pope’s imitation of and reliance upon Virgil seems unmistakably clear. “Windsor Forest” concludes thusly:
“Here cease thy flight, nor with unhallowed lays
Touch the fair fame of Albion’s golden days.
The thoughts of gods let Granville’s verse recite,
And bring the scenes of opening fate to light.
My humble Muse, in unambitious strains,
Paints the green forests and the flowr’y plains,
Where peace descending bids her olives spring,
And scatters blessings from her dove-like wing.
Ev’n I more sweetly pass my careless days,
Pleased in the silent shade with empty praise;
Enough for me, that to the listening swains
First in these fields I sung the sylvan strains” (ll. 422-434).
Virgil’s conclusion to book four of the Georgics reads as follows:
“Thus of agriculture and the care of flocks I sang
And forestry, while great Caesar fired his lightnings and conquered
By deep Euphrates, and gave justice to docile peoples,
Winning his way to the Immortals.
This was the time when I, Virgil, nurtured in sweetest
Parthenope, did follow unknown to fame the pursuits
Of peace, who dallied in pastoral verse, and by youth emboldened,
Tityrus, sang of you in the shade of a spreading beech” (Virgil ll. 559-566).
Scholar Monica Gale’s remarks concerning Virgil’s conclusion might be aptly applied to Pope’s closing lines: “The sphragis serves to create an emphatic, over-determined sense of ending, of completeness and finality… Formal closure can serve to emphasize a harmonious resolution of tensions and discords, but it can also function simply as a final restatement of tensions that admit of no resolution” (Gale 325). In effect, the final twelve lines of “Windsor Forest” reconcile the poem’s political anxieties and tensions by providing a forceful statement that Pope refuses to provide a complete reconciliation of conflicting attitudes which would necessarily “…with unhallowed lays/ Touch the fair fame of Albion’s golden days” (ll. 423-424). Notably, Pope’s employment of “fair” as an adjective suggests the fragility of the conception which the poem contains concerning the reign of Queen Anne as marking the advent of a “golden age” of the British Empire, comparable to the history of Octavian’s rule. Nevertheless, Pope’s closing lines display a deep sense of gratitude for the peace established by the Stuart regime which allowed his poetic career to flourish. Thus “Windsor Forest” concludes, on a profoundly personal note with intimations of the panegyric.
In the end, as variously evinced throughout “Windsor Forest,” Pope’s historical and literary consciousness of Rome’s Augustan period seems an undeniably significant factor in terms of examining the complex production, sustainment, operation, and ambiguous final resolution of political anxieties and tensions. As David Morris has eloquently observed, Pope’s praise of Queen Anne “never compromises [his] absolute refusal to ignore the painful complexities of the past and present. The vision of man’s highest civilized potential coexists with a compassionate awareness of the tears of things which, in a world still far from perfect or redeemed, accompany even the most heroic victories over disorder” (Morris 239). What some critics have cited as Pope’s political inconsistency, even incoherency, seems to constitute but one of many of the inevitable products of a deep and thorough historical consciousness. What I have identified as Pope’s anxiety seems to comprise a thoughtful attempt to represent the complexity of early eighteenth-century Britain through the arrangement of often implicit historical parallels with the age of Augustus. Pope seems to regard himself in some degree as the Virgil of his own era, eventually positioning himself with respect to the court of Queen Anne in the same manner that Virgil related himself to the regime of Octavian. Ultimately, “Windsor Forest” does not seem to exist as a deeply fragmented piece of poetry, fraught with irreconcilable political and compositional divisions; rather, the poem represents an entirely cohesive whole which poignantly acknowledges at the same time it attempts to circumvent the troubling cyclicality of history.
Works Cited
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