Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 | Page 7

no poet. Taking passage
for passage, I will undertake to cite more lines teeming with
imagination from Pope than from any two living poets, be they who
they may. To take an instance at random from a species of composition
not very favourable to imagination--Satire: set down the character of
Sporus, with all the wonderful play of fancy which is scattered over it,
and place by its side an equal number of verses, from any two existing
poets, of the same power and the same variety--where will you find
them?
"I merely mention one instance of many in reply to the injustice done to
the memory of him who harmonised our poetical language. The
attorneys clerks, and other self-educated genii, found it easier to distort
themselves to the new models than to toil after the symmetry of him
who had enchanted their fathers. They were besides smitten by being
told that the new school were to revive the language of Queen
Elizabeth, the true English; as every body in the reign of Queen Anne
wrote no better than French, by a species of literary treason.
"Blank verse, which, unless in the drama, no one except Milton ever
wrote who could rhyme, became the order of the day,--or else such
rhyme as looked still blanker than the verse without it. I am aware that
Johnson has said, after some hesitation, that he could not 'prevail upon
himself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer.' The opinions of that
truly great man, whom it is also the present fashion to decry, will ever
be received by me with that deference which time will restore to him
from all; but, with all humility, I am not persuaded that the Paradise
Lost would not have been more nobly conveyed to posterity, not
perhaps in heroic couplets, although even they could sustain the subject
if well balanced, but in the stanza of Spenser, or of Tasso, or in the
terza rima of Dante, which the powers of Milton could easily have

grafted on our language. The Seasons of Thomson would have been
better in rhyme, although still inferior to his Castle of Indolence; and
Mr. Southey's Joan of Arc no worse, although it might have taken up
six months instead of weeks in the composition. I recommend also to
the lovers of lyrics the perusal of the present laureate's odes by the side
of Dryden's on Saint Cecilia, but let him be sure to read first those of
Mr. Southey.
"To the heaven-born genii and inspired young scriveners of the day
much of this will appear paradox; it will appear so even to the higher
order of our critics; but it was a truism twenty years ago, and it will be
a re-acknowledged truth in ten more. In the mean time, I will conclude
with two quotations, both intended for some of my old classical friends
who have still enough of Cambridge about them to think themselves
honoured by having had John Dryden as a predecessor in their college,
and to recollect that their earliest English poetical pleasures were drawn
from the 'little nightingale' of Twickenham.
"The first is from the notes to a Poem of the 'Friends[5],' pages 181,
182.
"'It is only within the last twenty or thirty years that those notable
discoveries in criticism have been made which have taught our recent
versifiers to undervalue this energetic, melodious, and moral poet. The
consequences of this want of due esteem for a writer whom the good
sense of our predecessors had raised to his proper station have been
NUMEROUS AND DEGRADING ENOUGH. This is not the place to
enter into the subject, even as far as it affects our poetical numbers
alone, and there is matter of more importance that requires present
reflection.'
"The second is from the volume of a young person learning to write
poetry, and beginning by teaching the art. Hear him[6]:
"'But ye were dead To things ye knew not of--were closely wed To
musty laws lined out with wretched rule And compass vile; so that ye
taught a school[7] Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and chip, and fit, Till, like
the certain wands of Jacob's wit, _Their verses tallied. Easy was the

task:_ A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask Of poesy. Ill-fated,
impious race, That blasphemed the bright lyrist to his face, And did not
know it; no, they went about Holding a poor decrepit standard out
Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large The name of one
Boileau.'
"A little before the manner of Pope is termed
"'A _scism_[8], Nurtured by foppery and barbarism, Made great Apollo
blush for this his land.'
"I thought '_foppery_' was a consequence of _refinement_; but
_n'importe_.
"The above will suffice to show the notions entertained by the new
performers on the