Pope’s Introduction To Dryden At Will’s Coffee House by Eyre Crowe

Tweet

If not introduced properly, the painting “Pope’s Introduction To Dryden At Will’s Coffee House” could not get the required attention it deserves. The painting holds the portraits of 17^th century are some of the greatest minds, who regularly visited the Will’s Coffee House as a coffee house was popular for formal gatherings in the century.

Names of the writing geniuses at Will’s Coffee House include Johnson, Richard Steele, John Vanbrugh, Joseph Addison, Thomas Southerne, Dennis and more importantly John Dryden. The little kid is Alexander Pope – a new boy in town who became a prominent poet in later times- not to be confused with any of the Pope Alexander.

Deep influences in childhood cause the ultimate direction of life in adulthood. And that is proven in Alexander Pope’s life. He got a very fortunate chance to meet the country’ and era’s best writers and poets at one place. Also his favorite poet-writer Dryden whose works he admired the most.

The occurance of Pope’s meeting to Dryden happened through an incident in which Dryden was discussing about Mac Flecknoe’s writing with his fellow friends. He was stating that Flecknoe’s style was first of its league. Sensing some incorrectness, Pope said aloud that Flecknoe was a good writer but the style he was using was not unprecedented. On asking whom he considers to having such style before, he named Boileau and Tassoni – two old times poets. Dryden was impressed by the kid’s interest and intelligence and met him more than once for next few days.

The significance of the little incidence is that it encouraged Alexander Pope to a great level. He was enthralled to meet Dryden regularly and learnt a lot. This fortune he received could be one of the corner stones of Alexander Pope’s bright writing career. Today, he is the third most quoted poet in Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, ranking after Shakespeare and Lord Tennyson.

Will, the owner of the Coffee house has written all of the geniuses’ visits to his coffee house as well as the writers’ have jotted down some of the important incidences in their books including Pope’s visit with Dryden. Everyone respected John Dryden a lot and was considered as “Glorious John” by Walter Scott and his time was called as “Age of Dryden” by some noted historians and writers.

This painting represents an idea about how a great personality can affect another person and can indirectly create another great personality. It’s more of like a gentle push in right direction. It’s like a chain which shouldn’t be broken, a chain of encouragement, enthusiasm and helpfulness.