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

As reason will reche.'

(Skelton, Colin Clout, 1. 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 manners, 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 Their reading of life is superseded by a reading which is, not truer, but more modern.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 contemporary 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 marked an unmanage

able 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, Euvres, 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; and in most of them we are offended by a license of irregularity which may be pardoned in the improvisatore, but which is rigorously required in all works 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

C

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 fully realised in Cowper (died 1800). (See Quarterly Review, July 1862). 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, 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.' (Lit. 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 phænomenon 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, than it retains in a later age, when others have learned to emulate and preserve the same uniformity.' (Hallam, Literature, 3. 466, ed. 1854.)

It was especially in attention to the laws of rhythm that the newly awakened æsthetic sense found its occupation. The reform of the school of the Restoration in the melody of versification has been so great that it has struck every critic, and has tended to obscure the fact that this reform was but a portion of the general endeavour at 'composition,' 'The exquisite beauty of the versification has withdrawn the public attention from their other excellences, as the vulgar eye will rest more upon the splendour of the uniform than the quality of the troops.' (Byron, Works, 15. 87.) The greater part of the poetry of the seventeenth century, prior to the Restoration, seems to be without any prosodial system; to know nothing of rhythm, metre, or

accent, and to be bound together solely by the final assonance. There were not wanting some earlier exceptions, such as Sandys (died 1643); but in Donne (died 1631) we have versification which can scarcely be said to be subject to any laws at all. As the century advances we trace a growing effort to bring English versification under metrical law. Dryden (1631–1700) did the most in this direction. Dryden, indeed, always referred to Waller (died 1687, æt. 83) as his master, declaring that 'unless he had written, none of us could write.' (Scott, Life of Dryden, ch. 1.) But Dryden has many irregular verses, and it was left for Pope to bring the couplet under rules of metrical scansion as strict as the English language will allow.

The Essay on Man is composed in the rhymed couplet of verses of five accents. The history of this metre is curious. It was long used for light and trifling subjects, and is contemptuously spoken of by the critics of the sixteenth century, in contrast with the stanzas, which were alone thought appropriate to serious topics. (Puttenham, Art of English Poesie, p. 50, ed. 1811.)

It is easy to see the origin of this preference for the stanza in grave works. The stanza in verse is the analogue of the prose sentence as constructed by Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, or Milton. Each of these stately periods carries along with it, over and above its direct predication, all the conditions and exceptions to which the writer wishes to submit that predication, all woven into one structure. There is in each stanza or sentence so much as fills the mind to the utmost strain of its capacity for attention; and then a pause for reflection and digestion. The same process which broke up the composite period of earlier prose into the disjointed modern style of short sentences, took place in verse. The stanza gradually gave way before the couplet. This dissolution of the staff was going on all through the seventeenth century. In Denham we have the intermediate stage. Cooper's Hill (1643) is in couplets, but the sense is habitually continued from verse to verse, to such an extent that we feel as if the poet had forgotten he was not writing in stanzas. Davenant cut down the Spenserian stanza to the elegiac staff of four lines,