ALEXANDER POPE by Peter Quennell. 278 pages. Stein and Day. $7.95.
Why did I write? what sin to me unknown Dipp'd me in ink, my parents' or my own?
Alexander Pope left his own question unanswered, but a second look at his heroic couplet suggests that the Age of Reason, of which Pope was the prime English poetic voice, was not as innocent of depth psychology as a post-Freudian age might complacently assume. Pope's sin (in modern usage, his neurosis or maladjustment) is explored with devoted detachment by Peter Quennell in the first...