ABSTRACT
‘Messiah’ was first published on 14 May 1712. At the very end of his life, in April 1744, Pope estimated that the verse of his Pastorals was more ‘laboured’ than anything else; Spence noted: ‘The last (the Messiah) his own favourite of them all’ (OAC, I.175, no. 400). On the same occasion Pope observed, ‘Though Virgil in his pastorals has sometimes six or eight lines together that are epic, I have been so scrupulous as scarce ever to admit above two together, even in the Messiah’ (OAC, I.176, no. 401). There is no other substantial evidence that the ‘Messiah’ was produced over a long period of thoughtful care in the way the Pastorals were (see Headnote); even the relatively detailed statement of method outlined in the ‘Advertisement’ to the poem in the 1717 Works contains very little of substance about timing and process, acting rather as a gloss on how it ought to be read. The poem seems to have been composed very shortly before its anonymous publication in the Spectator, no. 378, on 14 May 1712. On 23 May, John Caryll wrote to Pope asking him about his planned imitation of Virgil’s fourth Eclogue (addressed to Gaius Asinius Pollio and commonly known as ‘Pollio’; see ‘Models’ below): ‘I hope your health permitted you to execute your design of giving us an imitation of Pollio’ (Corr., I.142), and on 28 May Pope replied, saying that
the eclogue on the Messiah in imitation of Pollio, I had transcribed a week since with design to send it to you; but finding it printed in the Spectator of the fourteenth (which paper I know is constantly sent down to you) I gave it to Mr Englefield.
(Corr., I.144; Anthony Englefield was a neighbour of Pope’s at Binfield)