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Allegiance, Sympathy, And History: The Catholic Loyalties Of Alexander Pope, Steven Stryer

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

The charges leveled by John Dennis against the young author of An Essay on Criticism are characteristically hyperbolic: Alexander Pope is disparaged as a historical partisan whose loyalties (to the Catholics James II and his son the Pretender) and antipathies (to the Protestants Charles II and William III) are determined entirely by his allegiance to the Church of Rome. Dennis claims that in comparing the classical writers to absolute monarchs, Pope had hinted his approval of James's suspension of the operation of the penal laws against Catholics in defiance of Parliament-in contrast with his explicit rejection later in the poem …