or speaking of his ethical poems: "He stooped to Truth and moralised his song or of the vanity of earthly pleasure : "In Folly's cup still laughs the bubble, joy "— or of the Ruling Passion: "In Life's vast ocean diversely we sail, He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind." But in many of his most famous passages, such as the character of Atticus, the Man of Ross, the death-bed of Buckingham, the metaphors are few, and the force of the language consists in the extraordinary felicity of the words selected to describe objects affecting to the imagination. Two objections have been made to Pope's idea of poetical conception and exccution, one of which appears to be much more valid than the other. It is objected to his imaginative idea of Nature that it is too limited; that in effect it includes only the nature of Man; his representations of life being confined to ethical subjects, or to the manners and characters of refined society; and that it excludes the romantic and pathetic element, which constitutes so large a part of the interest in the highest kind of poetry. It must be admitted that this charge is in itself well-founded, and that, in consequence, Pope cannot be placed in the same rank as a poet with great writers like Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton, whose work is more spacious and sublime in its scope. On the other hand it is just to remember that Pope was essentially the poet of his age, and that, with admirable judgment, he adapted his genius to what he felt were the necessities of his art. The image implies the descent of an cagle upon its quarry. The poetry of the eighteenth century has, in this respect, a close analogy to its politics. In itself, for instance, the Whig idea of the English Constitution is narrow and inadequate; yet who doubts that the supremacy of the Whig party in the first half of the eighteenth century was necessary for the establishment of Constitutional liberty? Similarly the merit of Pope lies less in his actual conceptions of nature, than in his just methods of representing it, in his demonstration of the artistic necessity of subject in poetry, and of the exactness of harmony between subject and form. When critics complain of the limitation of his art, they should compare the methods of himself and his followers with those of the bulk of seventeenth-century poets, setting aside Shakespeare and Milton. They would then see that, in a poem like the 'Seasons,' in which the imagery is drawn almost entirely from rural life; in the Elegy in a Country Churchyard,' or the 'Deserted Village,' which are deeply pathetic; even in 'Childe Harold,' which is thoroughly romantic, the design is formed on the critical principles first formulated by Pope. Contrarily, they would find that, in the great majority of seventeenth-century poets, even in Dryden himself, a general idea of Nature is wanting, their poems being founded upon private, partial, or transitory conceptions, which have long lost their interest for the modern reader.' The other objection strikes at Pope's poetical diction, as a thing per se. Cowper, foreshadowing the attack made on Pope by Wordsworth and Coleridge in the next generation, says in Table Talk' that "He (his musical finesse was such, So nice his ear, so delicate his touch), Made poetry a mere mechanic art, And every warbler has the tune by heart." No criticism, in my opinion, was ever more superficial or unjust. I am speaking of the written poetry of the seventeenth century, not of the acted drama. Certain strongly marked features in Pope's treatment of the heroic measure, such as the emphatic marking of the cæsura, the collocation of substantive and adjective, and the limitation of the sentence to the couplet, were of course easy of imitation, and were therefore copied freely by every uninspired versifier in the eighteenth century. But in Pope these features are the index of original conception: expression with him is the dress of thought,' and his diction almost always exhibits the energy of imagination or passion. What other poet ever wrote, or could have written, such couplets as "The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine! In these verses the very soul, spirit, and energy of the man himself shines through. Compare with such writing Cowper's own conversational style in metre, and elegant and, in its own way, admirable as that is, how inferior is it felt to be in all that constitutes movement, life, and general interest! Still more inexplicable does Cowper's criticism appear, in view of the great variety of harmony that Pope contrived to evoke from a metrical instrument of such limited compass as the heroic couplet. When we reflect that the same hand which described the sylphs in the cordage of Belinda's barge 66 Transparent forms too fine for mortal sight, Colours that change whene'er they wave their wings or which wrote that most exquisite couplet on the Rape of the Lock' "The meeting points the sacred hair dissever could also depict in the same metre the heroic energy of Sarpedon and the glowing passion of Heloise; could again preserve in unfading colours the portrait of Atticus, 66 Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, and then change once more to the brilliant dialogue of the 'Epistle to Arbuthnot' and the 'Epilogue to the Satires,' or to the splendid satiric description of the travelled Dunce Intrepid then, o'er lands and seas he flew; Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too. There all thy gifts and graces we display, To happy convents, bosomed deep in vines, Diffusing languor in the panting gales : To lands of singing or of dancing slaves, Love-whisp'ring woods and lute-resounding waves"— for those who feel the versatile and sensitive genius which such work implies, it is difficult to deal patiently with the assertion that Pope made poetry 'a mere mechanic art.' Apart, however, from all contention on this point, it is of the highest interest to trace historically the growth of these two objections, till they swell into the full tide of reaction which set in against the classical school at the commencement of the present century. Warburton's edition of Pope's works published in 1751 perhaps marks the high water-mark of classical taste. Just before, and immediately after, the death of Pope, however, there were not wanting symptoms that the tide was about to turn. In 1748 Joseph Warton published, in a collection of verses by different hands, a poem called 'The Enthusiast, or the Love of Nature.' According to his biographer this was written in the year 1740, and, accepting this date, it may certainly be regarded as the starting-point of the romantic revival, as it expresses all that love of solitude and that yearning for the spirit of a by-gone age, which are specially associated with the genius of the romantic school of poetry.' In 1745 Joseph's younger brother Thomas published a poem called 'The Pleasures of Melancholy,' in which the following lines occur: "Through Pope's soft song though all the graces breathe, And happiest art adorn his Attic page; Yet does my mind with sweeter transport glow, As at the foot of mossy trunk reclined, In magic Spenser's wildly warbled song I see deserted Una wander wide Through wasteful solitudes and lurid heaths, Amid the splendours of the laughing Sun."* In the following year was printed a volume of Odes by William Collins, the friend of Joseph and Thomas Warton, in which were these lines: "I view that oak, the fancied glades among, From many a cloud that dropped ethereal dew, From Waller's myrtle shades retreating, Of all the sons of soul was known; And Heaven, and Fancy, kindred powers, Have now o'erturned th' inspiring bowers; Or curtained close such scene from every future view." 'Chalmers' English Poets,' vol. xviii., p. 145, 'Life of Joseph Warton.' 2 Chalmers' 'English Poets,' vol xviii., p. 96. |