When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod, Ess. 1. 61-68. 'Here a difficulty in the scheme of human life is not met by other positions that man is placed in, which might reconcile us to the difficulty, but by two comparisons poetically striking, but logically unsatisfying. Butler would never have gone to the inferior creatures for an analogy. He would have recalled to our view, as a general principle, of which numerous other examples would be given, "the government of God considered as a scheme or constitution imperfectly comprehended," and would have endeavoured to point out that the imperfect comprehension was a fact of the natural world as well as of the supernatural. No human being really beset with earnest doubts would take any comfort from Pope's couplets; many have found repose in Butler's reasonings... [In other passages of the Essay] we have a profuse employment of the power of similarity in adducing lively illustrations, not only with very little force to instruct the mind, but with a tendency to distort the truth. The difference between Pope and Bp. Butler is the difference between a close observer of phenomena anxious to get at the truth, and a genius for language that cares principally for poetic effect, and takes the thoughts at second-hand.' (Study of Character, p. 343.) Our age can no longer read the Essay on Man as a théodicée. We find its arguments confused, and its dry rationalism unedifying. The subject has not lost its interest, but the questions which are involved are all advanced into a further stage. Our greatly enlarged knowledge of the laws, both of nature and of thought, make the metaphysical and theological discussions of the eighteenth century seem to us either superficial common-places, or partial special pleadings. The Essay on Man can only be read as a classic, as a relic of past controversies. Neglecting its ambitious design of exhibiting a system of nature and providence, we can only regard it as presenting us with the popular moral ideas of that age. Even in this view the Essay on Man is inferior in interest to other poems of Pope—to his Satires and Epistles. These have more concrete instances, individual traits, and personal characteristics. In the Essay on Man the moralising is more abstract, the allusions are historical, and not cotemporary. The ethical reflections of that class of moralists who generalize maxims from what is called 'knowledge of the world,' have about them something which is especially perishable. Every national literature which has developed itself naturally has had periods of gnomic poetry. Maxims of life and manners are in demand as soon as ever social relations become an object of reflection. In the middle age of England, after the period of war and knightly adventure pictured in the romances of chivalry, followed a period when social intercourse began to refine itself, and to call for its philosophers and its legislators. The satirist is the philosopher, and the moralist the legislator of such a period. The pompous ceremonial and scenic exterior give way to humbler but more human forms of life. The fantastic sentiment which formed the ideal standard of character in the age of chivalry, is supplanted by the maxims of a shrewd commonsense. These reflections on life and conduct, this proverbial philosophy, is adopted by the poets and becomes a favourite staple of popular verse. The fifteenth century in England was such a period. Gower, Lydgate, Hoccleve, Skelton, Burgh, along with others of less or no note, form a whole literature by themselves They wrote 'To teche or to preche (Skelton, Colin Clout, l. 13.) Pope, Addison, Steele, Prior, Gay, Swift were in a similar relation to the changed manners and more refined society of the eighteenth century. The writer, be he poet or moralist, who. deals with this range of reflection, must be prepared to have it said of him in the next generation that he is trite and commonplace; as Johnson said of the Essay on Man, that it shows ' penury of knowledge and vulgarity of sentiment.' (Life of Pope.) Gower and Lydgate must ever remain objects of curiosity to students of our language or historians of our manner, but as moral teachers they are obsolete. Their ethics are not false, but they are trite and vulgar. Their reading of life is superseded by a reading which is, not truer, but more modern. It is impossible not to feel that the same process of obsolescence is gradually affecting the moral and metaphysical parts of Pope's poems. His personalities, his particular portraits, and vivid pictures of cotemporary manners have lost nothing of their original interest. But when he enunciates universal truths, we find that the lapse of 150 years has tarnished their brightness without detracting from their justice. When we turn from the matter of the Essay to the execution, dissatisfaction gives way to admiration. We then see the secret of the eminence which Pope attained, and which he must always retain as long as the English language continues to be read. In the art of metrical composition, Pope was a master. Johnson, who depreciated him, did not hesitate to say, that ‘a thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of versification equal to his.' (Boswell, Life, vol. 8, p. 15.) Pope erred in selecting an uncongenial subject, and in attempting to argue and discuss in metre. But he has masked an unmanageable matter by his inimitable art of expression. Such is the importance of style. It is truly said by Boileau, that in all languages a mean thought expressed in noble terms is better liked than the noblest thought expressed in mean terms. For everybody cannot judge of the force and justness of a thought, but scarce any but perceives the meanness of words.' (Reflexions Critiques. Refl. 9, Œuvres, 3. 218, ed. 1722.) In reading each paragraph of the Essay, we may take the thought as a given material, and make a separate study of the setting and workmanship. The young scholar cannot propose to himself a more instructive model to dwell upon and to analyse. As a poet, Pope is surpassed by many in our language; as a literary artist, by Gray alone. Poets of an earlier age, and poets of the age which followed Pope's, offer a rich fancy, a tender sentiment, sublime invention, deep emotion, lofty imagination—all of which are wholly wanting in Pope. But in none of these poets will be found that sense of proportion and harmony of parts, the symmetry and balance, the neither too much nor too little, which characterise the classic in any language. In most of them we are offended by a license of irregularity which may be pardoned in the improvisatore, but which is wholly inadmissible in a work of art. In his choice of the subject of the Essay on Man, Pope, we have said, was the man of his age. He was no less so in the form in which he endeavoured to elaborate his material, and in the fact that his interest lay in the elaboration, rather than in the matter treated. Pope is often spoken of as the head of a school of poetry. In the sense of being the most eminent writer of a school, he was so, but chronologically he was the latest of the school he represents. Before his death in 1744, poetry had already given indications of the new character and new tone which were realised in Cowper (died 1800). The school of which Pope is the last representative, and the most perfect type, may be said to have been in possession of the poetical stage for the century from 1660 to 1760. It may be broadly contrasted with the poetry which preceded, and with that which followed, by its aim. The common aim of the writers of the epoch which dates from the Restoration was form or art. Pope himself used to ascribe this direction of his own genius to the suggestion of an adviser. 'Walsh used to tell me that there was one way left of excelling; for though we had several great poets, we never had any one great poet who was correct; and desired me to make that my study and aim.' (Spence, Anecdotes, p. 52, ed. 1820.) But the fact is, that Pope was only striving in the same direction in which his contemporaries were striving. The Elizabethan poets and their successors had only cared to utter their fancies, thoughts, conceits, and images, in rich exuberance of phrase. They were incapable of selection, or of keeping back. Though full of second-hand classical allusion, they had no sense of true classical form. They were wholly intent upon the matter of what they wished to say, careless how they said it. This diffuse prodigality of a lawless imagination necessarily superinduced a reaction. The repetitions, the redundancies, the luxuriant abandon of such poets as Davies or Davenant surfeited the reader and made him crave for a more simple diet. The attention once fixed upon the art of expression, there was created in literature the demand for form, a demand which is the condition of all art. The substance of what was to be said lay ready to hand in the ordinary conversation and ordinary books; but the effort and the rivalry now was, how to say it. It was no longer necessary to observe, to learn, to think, to read. The common and obvious thoughts satisfied every one. To go beyond the obvious was stigmatised as pedantry. He who best reflected the general sentiment was held in most esteem. The substance of their poetry was what Villemain attributes to La Motte, la fine expression de l'élegance sociale, qui se croit la vérité poétique.' (Litt. Franç. 1. 42.) This was common to them all. Upon this material they worked. To give clearness and plainness to the language, to file and finish the lines, to reject superfluity, to diffuse a subdued colour over the whole, to regulate the just subordination of the parts-these became the business of the poet, and every writer who aspired to be read was a poet. This striving after perfection of form, along with deficient interest in the matter of what is said, which now appeared for the first time in our language, is the same phenomenon as had shown itself in the 'Ciceronianism' of the Italian humanists of the sixteenth century. In English verse, as in Latin prose, the very perfection reached contained the germ of decay. 'This elaborate though equable strain in a kind of poetry, which, never requiring high flights of fancy, escapes the censure of mediocrity and monotony, excites more admiration in those who have been accustomed to the numerous defects of less finished poets, thar |