broad wing and souses on all the knaves and fools who displease the author. There is something fine in Pope's scorn of folly, except when it leads him into too bitter a hatred of fools. His belief, as Mr. Leslie Stephen has observed, that stupidity could be cured by satire is splendid if over-sanguine. We cannot indeed defend the 'grossness of the images,"2 nor clear the poem of the charge of nastiness, yet, though it breathes all the savageness of Swift and reeks of the filth in which he delighted, it recalls some of the imagination displayed in the Rape of the Lock.' Pope was not so ungenerous as he is painted. Most of the good writers of the day are praised freely and fully. On the other hand, if we confess that Pope has suffered, in accordance with Swift's prophecy, from the insignificance of his enemies, we must also admit that he was justified by the correctness of his judgment. Satirical criticism serves a useful and legitimate end when it improves public taste, saving it from admiration of bad models, and ridiculing the dulness that boasts itself to be somewhat. So far as it performs this duty it is saved from the fate of dying with the writers it destroys. Public taste is ever in need of a corrective, and the types that Curll and Theobald represent in the Dunciad are still with us. The Essay on Man' might almost stand for a satire on man, the glory, jest and riddle of the world.' It is, really, a commentary on 'Gulliver's Travels,' obscured by an alien philosophy, an unhistorical account of society and an optimism at once intellectually false and morally callous. is a farrago of inconsistent doctrines relieved by 1 Epilogue to the Satires,' Dialogue ii. 15. 2 Johnson. It 3 Dryden, Congreve, Addison, Locke. Bentley was attacked as the editor and mutilator of Milton, not as a classical scholar. 'Essay on Man,' ii. 18. epigrammatic pungency and true wit as the author defined it.1 The classical strain which was never long absent from the Dunciad,' suggesting Juvenal, Horace, and Persius, recurs again in the Moral Essays, the grave epistles bringing vice to light,' and in the Imitations of Horace.' Here Pope is at his best. As in the Rape of the Lock,' so here, he has once more in describing the one thing which he knew, the Court and Town of his time, the proper material on which to lay out his elaborate workmanship." Wit and epigrams sparkle on every page. Most of all, in these half-satirical, halffamiliar epistles, where 'satire heals with morals what it hurts with wit," has he deserved the praise he desired.1 In the Characters of Women,' for instance, his powers of terse and finished portraiture, of brilliant wit and epigram, of exquisite flattery, are admirably displayed. Sweeping denunciation, ruthless vivisection of many types in the persons of Flavia, Narcissa and Atossa, only serve to heighten the effect of the delicate compliment and courtly exception. The Imitations of Horace' are written in accordance with the dictum previously expressed in the preface to the edition of his works published in 1716: All that is left us is to recommend our productions by imitation of the Ancients.' No man's spirit was ever less Horatian than that of 1'Essay on Criticism': 'True wit is Nature to advantage dressed; What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.' 2 Mark Pattison. From grave to gay, from lively to severe, Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease, this jealous, waspish rhymer. None the less, Pope shows marvellous cleverness and admirable pungency when he adapts the satires of Horace. He improves, indeed, on the point and wit of individual lines, though he loses the flavour and inner unity of thought. Nothing can exceed the skill with which, by bitter and pointed sarcasms, he turned the courtly flattery of Horace to Augustus into a stinging satire on George II. In these Imitations, the pleasure of unexpected analogies compensates for the violence done to history and for the extreme artificiality of the method. Dryden observes in his essay that 'fineness of raillery, the best manner of satire, is not offensive; a witty man is tickled while he is hurt: a fool feels it not. If, despite his delicate theory, he is sometimes rough, he is always straightforward. He deals a knock-down blow, but does not stab in the dark. If he is coarse, it is usually in reply to a coarse and scurrilous attack. He does not descend to the nastiness of Pope. Not so sly as Chaucer, nor so insinuating as Addison, he is without malice. The consciousness of easy superiority which never left him saves him from mere pettiness and spite. The underhand malice of Pope is alien to his manly character. Though he was not one of the 'gentle bosoms,' he was not venomous. 'Spiteful he is not, though he wrote a satire."3 Quick to anger, he was also quick to forgive and forget. But of Pope, Bentley said with good reason, 'The portentous cub never forgives.' Where Pope's satire is most stinging, his motives 1 Ep. II. i. 2' On the Origin and Progress of Satire,' prefixed to his translation of Juvenal. Cf. No creature smarts so little as a fool.'Pope, Prologue to the Satires,' 84. 3'Abs. and Ach.,' Part II. are frequently mean. His laurels are entwined with the thorns of hatred. There is as much gall and wormwood in his composition as in that of Archilochus himself, the father of satire. As with the Greek, his motives are mainly personal. His virulent prose satire, The Frenzy of John Dennis,' was written to please Addison, though it failed in its object. His attacks on Theobald were dictated by literary. jealousy, on Addison by wounded self-love, on Lady Mary by the savage vindictiveness of rejected admiration. His treatment of women, even his praise of women, is degrading. He had, in fact, like Boileau, a bad heart, and cannot be acquitted of the charge, Lædere gaudes . . . et hoc studio pravus facis.1 Partisan poetry had been severe enough in Dryden's hands, but in the hands of Pope, it became still more personal and bitter. In Dryden we find strong sense, command of the happy word, and wit marked by a certain breadth; in Pope sense as strong, if narrower, a more 'curious felicity,' wit unrivalled in keenness and point. A certain colloquial familiarity lends an air of easy strength to Dryden's satire. His comparisons are usually happy. His work abounds with knowledge, and sparkles with pithy sentences which drop from his pen as if unawares. Pope's art is always peeping out; his comparisons lack grandeur, and often truth also, whilst his expressions are sometimes less accurate than he supposes. As a delineator of character, as a describer of personal weaknesses, Pope stands unrivalled. Although he boasts that he 'praises a courtier where he can, and even in a bishop can spy desert," he lacks as a rule the discrimination of Dryden. Hence 1 Hor., Sat. I., iv., 78, 79. 'You delight to hurt, and do so with zeal by reason of your bad heart.' 2 Dialogue ii., 63, 70. 3 An exception to this is the portrait of Addison. his detached passages are superior to the complete poems. Unequalled as a satirist of individuals, and as an observer within a limited compass, he is invaluable as a critic of the social life of his own day. His particular portraits are as excellent as his philosophy and his theories are ridiculous. He has no gift for general moralizing. When he declares that the proper study of mankind is man, man means with him Bolingbroke, Walpole, Swift, Curll, and Theobald.' Dryden is pre-eminent in the reflective vein of satire. Pope, without Dryden's gift of reasoning in verse, displays more than his love of it. He has no consecutive power of argument. His precision of thought is not able to cope with the fascination of a brilliant phrase, and is sacrificed to his method of composition. His epigrams are the quintessence of a volume of reflection; his couplets are the product of incredible toil. To make verses was his first labour; to mend them was his last. He suffered the tumult of imagination to subside, and was never tired of polishing his mosaics until they were finally inserted, too often without due regard to the consistency of the whole. Dryden, on the other hand, wrote, he says, with very little consideration, to please others, and to make a living. Pope, being independent of money, wrote, without haste, to please himself. Whilst Pope's satire deals only with externals, Dryden's goes to the root of the matter. When Dryden is describing a character satirically, every line adds to or modifies it, but Pope's verses amplify and spin upon the same idea. Dryden excels in comprehension, Pope in minuteness; Dryden in breadth, Pope in compression; Dryden in rugged strength and 1 Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library.' 2 E.g., 'Essay on Man.' |