The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, vol 2 | Page 3

a load which only a giant's arm could lift, and which he added to
a caravan of priceless wealth, the native inheritance of his own genius.
The highest rank of poets descend on their sublime subjects, like Uriel,

descending alongst his sunbeam on the mountain tops; another order,
with care, and effort, and circumspection, often with
'Labour dire and weary woe,'
reach noble heights, and there wave their hats, and dance in
astonishment at their own perseverance and success. So it is with Pope
in his peroration to the Dunciad, and in many other of the serious and
really eloquent passages of his works. They ARE eloquent, brilliant, in
composition faultless; but the intense self-consciousness of their author,
and their visible elaboration, prevent them from seeming or being great.
Of Pope, you say, "He smells of the midnight lamp;" of Dante, boys
cried out on the street, "Lo! the man that was in hell." With the very
first class of poets, artificial objects become natural, the "rod" becomes
a "serpent;" with Pope, natural objects become artificial, the "serpent"
becomes a "rod." Wordsworth makes a spade poetical; Pope would
have made Skiddaw little better than a mass of prose.
Let us hear Hazlitt: "Pope saw nature only dressed by art; he judged of
beauty by fashion; he sought for truth in the opinions of the world; he
judged the feelings of others by his own. The capacious soul of
Shakspeare had an intuitive and mighty sympathy with whatever could
enter into the heart of man in all possible circumstances; Pope had an
exact knowledge of all that he himself loved or hated, wished or wanted.
Milton has winged his daring flight from heaven to earth, through
Chaos and old Night; Pope's Muse never wandered in safety, but from
his library to his grotto, or from his grotto into his library, back again.
His mind dwelt with greater pleasure on his own garden than on the
garden of Eden; he could describe the faultless whole-length mirror that
reflected his own person, better than the smooth surface of the lake that
reflects the face of heaven; a piece of cut glass or pair of paste-buckles
with more brilliancy and effect than a thousand dewdrops glittering in
the sun. He would be more delighted with a patent lamp than with the
'pale reflex of Cynthia's brow,' that fills the sky with the soft silent
lustre that trembles through the cottage window, and cheers the mariner
on the lonely wave. He was the poet of personality and polished life.
That which was nearest to him was the greatest. His mind was the

antithesis of strength and grandeur; its power was the power of
indifference. He had none of the enthusiasm of poetry; he was in poetry
what the sceptic is in religion. In his smooth and polished verse we
meet with no prodigies of nature, but with miracles of wit; the thunders
of his pen are whispered flatteries; its forked lightnings, pointed
sarcasms; for the 'gnarled oak,' he gives us the 'soft myrtle;' for rocks,
and seas, and mountains, artificial grass-plots, gravel-walks, and
tinkling rills; for earthquakes and tempests, the breaking of a
flower-pot or the fall of a China jar; for the tug and war of the elements,
or the deadly strife of the passions,
"'Calm contemplation and poetic ease.'
"Yet within this retired and narrow circle, how much, and that how
exquisite, was contained! What discrimination, what wit, what delicacy,
what fancy, what lurking spleen, what elegance of thought, what
pampered refinement of sentiment!"
A great deal of discussion took place, during the famous controversy
about Pope between Bowles and Byron, on the questions--what objects
are and are not fitted for poetic purposes, and whether natural or
artificial objects be better suited for the treatment of the poet. In our life
of Bowles we promised, and shall now proceed to attempt, a short
review of the question then at issue, and which on both sides was pled
with such ingenuity, ardour, and eloquence.
The question, professedly that of the province, slides away into what is
the nature of poetry. The object of poetry is, we think, to show the
infinite through the finite--to reveal the ideal in the real--it seeks, by
clustering analogies and associations around objects, to give them a
beautiful, or sublime, or interesting, or terrible aspect which is not
entirely their own. Now, as all objects in comparison with the infinite
are finite, and all realities in comparison with the ideal are little, it
follows that between artificial and natural objects, as fitted for poetic
purposes, there is no immense disparity, and that both are capable of
poetic treatment. Both, accordingly, have become subservient to high
poetic effect; and even the preponderance, whatever it be on the part of
natural objects, has