The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, vol 2 | Page 9

in feeling, their attacks, and in showing their mummies for money.
That Pope deserves, on the whole, the name of "poet," we are willing, as aforesaid, to concede. But he was the most artificial of true poets. He had in him a real though limited vein, but did not trust sufficiently to it, and at once weakened and strengthened it by his peculiar kind of cultivation. He weakened it as a faculty, but strengthened it as an art; he lessened its inward force, but increased the elegance and facility of its outward expression. What he might have attained, had he left his study and trim gardens, and visited the Alps, Snowdon, or the Grampians--had he studied Boileau less, and Dante, Milton, or the Bible more--we cannot tell; but he certainly, in this case, would have left works greater, if not more graceful, behind him; and if he had pleased his own taste and that of his age less, he might have more effectually touched the chord of the heart of all future time by his poetry. As it is, his works resemble rather the London Colosseum than Westminster Abbey. They are exquisite imitations of nature; but we never can apply to them the words of the poet--
"O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,?As on its friends, with kindred eye;?For Nature gladly gave them place,?Adopted them into her race,?And granted them an equal date?With Andes and with Ararat."
Read, and admired, Pope must always be--if not for his poetry and passion, yet for his elegance, wit, satiric force, fidelity as a painter of artificial life, and the clear, pellucid English. But his deficiency in the creative faculty (a deficiency very marked in two of his most lauded poems we have not specified, his "Messiah" and "Temple of Fame," both eloquent imitations), his lack of profound thought, the general poverty of his natural pictures (there are some fine ones in "Eloisa and Abelard"), the coarse and bitter element often intermingled with his satire, the monotonous glitter of his verse, and the want of profound purpose in his writings, combine to class him below the first file of poets. And vain are all attempts, such as those of Byron and Lord Carlisle, to alter the general verdict. It is very difficult, after a time, either to raise or depress an acknowledged classic; and Pope must come, if he has not come already, to a peculiarly defined and strictly apportioned place on the shelf. He was unquestionably the poet of his age. But his age was far from being one of a lofty order: it was a low, languid, artificial, and lazily sceptical age. It loved to be tickled; and Pope tickled it with the finger of a master. It liked to be lulled, at other times, into half-slumber; and the soft and even monotonies of Pope's pastorals and "Windsor Forest" effected this end. It loved to be suspended in a state of semi-doubt, swung to and fro in agreeable equipoise; and the "Essay on Man" was precisely such a swing. It was fond of a mixture of strong English sense with French graces and charms of manner; and Pope supplied it. It was fond of keen, yet artfully managed satire; and Pope furnished it in abundance. It loved nothing that threatened greatly to disturb its equanimity or over-much to excite or arouse it; and there was little of this in Pope. Had he been a really great poet of the old Homer or Dante breed, he would have outshot his age, till he "dwindled in the distance;" but in lieu of immediate fame, and of elaborate lectures in the next century, to bolster it unduly up, all generations would have "risen and called him blessed."
We had intended some remarks on Pope as a prose-writer, and as a correspondent; but want of space has compelled us to confine ourselves to his poetry.
CONTENTS
MORAL ESSAYS--?Epistle I.--Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men?Epistle II.--Of the Characters of Women?Epistle III.--Of the Use of Riches?Epistle IV.--Of the Use of Riches?Epistle V.--Occasioned by his Dialogues on Medals
TRANSLATIONS AND IMITATIONS--?Sappho to Phaon?The Fable of Dryope?Vertumnus and Pomona?The First Book of Statius's Thebais?January and May?The Wife of Bath
PROLOGUES AND EPILOGUES--?A Prologue to a Play for Mr Dennis's Benefit?Prologue to Mr Addison's 'Cato'?Prologue to Mr Thomson's 'Sophonisba'?Prologue, designed for Mr D'Urfey's Last Play?Prologue to 'The Three Hours after Marriage'?Epilogue to Mr Rowe's 'Jane Shore'
MISCELLANIES--?The Basset-Table?Lines on receiving from the Right Hon. the Lady Frances Shirley a Standish and Two Pens?Verbatim from Boileau?Answer to the following Question of Mrs Howe?Occasioned by some Verses of His Grace the Duke of Buckingham Macer: a Character?Song, by a Person of Quality?On a Certain Lady at Court?On his Grotto at Twickenham?Roxana, or the Drawing-Room?To Lady Mary Wortley Montague?Extemporaneous Lines on a Portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montague Lines sung by Durastanti