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History of English Literature

Notes forgive divine," "A little learning is a dangerous thing," and "For fools rush in where angels fear to
tread."
Pope suffered an infection as a child that permanently curved his spine (he stood 4'6" tall)... Pope was
a Roman Catholic; his spotty education as a youth was due to restrictions against Catholics in
Protestant-ruled England.

Did u know? Pope gems are "Fools admire, but men approve," "The proper study of mankind
is man" and "Hope springs eternal in the human breast.

10.2 Heroic Couplet

A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used for epic and narrative
poetry; it refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter
lines. The rhyme is always masculine. Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey
Chaucer in the Legend of Good Women and the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer is also widely
credited with first extensive use of iambic pentameter.
Example

A frequently-cited example illustrating the use of heroic couplets is this passage from Cooper’s
Hill by John Denham, part of his description of the Thames:
O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull;
Strong without rage, without overflowing full

History

The term “heroic couplet” is sometimes reserved for couplets that are largely closed and self-
contained, as opposed to the enjambed couplets of poets like John Donne. The heroic couplet is
often identified with the English Baroque works of John Dryden and Alexander Pope. Major
poems in the closed couplet, apart from the works of Dryden and Pope, are Samuel Johnson’s The
Vanity of Human Wishes, Oliver Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village, and John Keats’s Lamia. The
form was immensely popular in the 18th century. The looser type of couplet, with occasional
enjambment, was one of the standard verse forms in medieval narrative poetry, largely because
of the influence of the Canterbury Tales.

Variations

English heroic couplets, especially in Dryden and his followers, are sometimes varied by the use
of the occasional alexandrine, or hexameter line, and triplet. Often these two variations are used
together to heighten a climax. The breaking of the regular pattern of rhyming pentameter pairs
brings about a sense of poetic closure. Here are three examples from Book IV of Dryden’s translation
of the Aeneid.

Triplet

Nor let him then enjoy supreme command;
But fall, untimely, by some hostile hand,
And lie unburied on the barren sand!
(ll. 890-892)

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