Alexander Pope

by John Michael Rysbrack
1730

National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG 5854)

Rysbrack's bust met with derision in the newspapers before it was completed:

To. Mr. REISBRANK, on his Carving A POPE'S Busto

REISBRANK, no longer let thy Art be shown
In forming Monsters from the Parian Stone;
Chuse for this Work a Stump of crooked Thorn,
Or Logg of Poyson-Tree, from India born,
There carve a Pert, but yet a Rueful Face,
Half Man, half Monkey, own'd by neither Race
Be his Crown pick'd, to one Side reclin'd,
Be to his Neck his Buttocks closely join'd,
With Breast protuberant, and Belly thin,
Bones all distorted, shrivell'd be his Skin.
    This his mishapen Form—————But say, what Art
Can shape the monstrous Image of his Heart,
Compos'd of Malice, Envy, Discontent
Like his limbs crooked, like them impotent?
But, Reisbrank, since by thee this can't be done,
Nor will these Passions live in Wood or Stone,
Thine be the Task to carve his Carkass foul,
The DUNCIAD only can describe his SOUL.

—Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer, Saturday, March 29, 1729, Issue 201

Pope's repsonse, in correspondence:

Tis granted Sir; the Busto's a damn'd head
    Pope is a little Elf
All he can say for't, is, He neither made
    The busto, nor himself.

—Pope to the Earl of Oxford, 2 April 1730), The Correspondence of Alexander Pope Vol. III, ed. George Sherburn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 100.

—by Allison Muri, February 2014