Selected Poems (1685-1700)

Selected Poems (1685-1700)

When John Tutchin died on September 23, 1707, he had already created the image of himself which Alexander Pope has transmitted to posterity. There, in Book II of The Dunciad (1728), the Whig journalist appears as one of two figures in a "shaggy Tap'stry": Pope, in his variorum notes on the passage, identified Tutchin as the "author of some vile verses, and of a weekly paper call'd the Observator," and revived the fiction of his sentence "to be whipp'd thro' several towns in the west of England, upon which he petition'd King James II. to be hanged." The "invective" against James II's memory, which Pope mentions, has now been identified in the Twickenham Edition as The British Muse: or Tyranny Expos'd (1701).[1] By 1728, this was all the reputation that remained for Mr. John Tutchin, Gentlemanirascible journalist, pamphleteer, and writer of verses. The truth of the matter is that Pope was no more accurate about Tutchin's being whipped than about Defoe's losing his ears. From the sparse reliable information concerning Tutchin's early years, one consistent pattern emerges: he tended to depict himself as a hero and a martyr. Born in 1661 "a Freeman" of London, he was brought up in a family of scholarly nonconformist ministers probably on the Isle of Wight[2]. Even though an enemy claimed that he had been expelled from a school at Stepney for stealing (DNB), he received some education and travelled on the continent. In defending his skill with languages against Defoe, he once told how at his school, boys translated and capped verses, and how he travelled "from Leivarden in Friezland, thro' Holland and the Spanish Flanders."[3] Throughout his life, he proudly designated himself a gentleman: during his trial for libel in late June of 1704, he even escaped punishment by setting forth that he was a gentleman, and not a laborer as the indictment read. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 38407
Author: Tutchin, John
Release Date: Dec 25, 2011
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Peterson, Spiro