The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, vol 2 | Page 5

it its own wealth
and glory. Now, Pope, we fear, wanted almost entirely this true second
sight. Take, for instance, the "lock" in the famous "Rape!" What fancy,
humour, wit, eloquence, he brings to play around it! But he never
touches it, even en passant, with a ray of poetry. You never could
dream of intertwining it with
"The tangles of Neaera's hair,"
far less with the "golden tresses" and "wanton ringlets" of our primeval
parent in the garden of Eden. Shakspeare, on the other hand, would
have made it a dropping from the shorn sun, or a mad moonbeam gone
astray, or a tress fallen from the hair of the star Venus, as she gazed too
intently at her own image in the calm evening sea. Nor will Pope leave
the "lock" entire in its beautiful smallness. He must apply a microscope
to it, and stake his fame on idealising its subdivided, single hairs. The
sylphs are created by combining the agility of Ariel with the lively
impertinence of the inhabitants of Lilliput. Yet with what ease,
elegance, and lingering love does he draw his petty Pucks, till, though
too tiny for touch, they become palpable to vision! On the whole, had
not the "Tempest" and the "Midsummer Night's Dream" existed before
the "Rape of the Lock," the machinery in it would have proclaimed
Pope a man of creative imagination. As it is, it proves wonderful
activity of fancy. Shakspeare's delicate creations are touched again
without crumbling at the touch, clad in new down, fed on a fresh
supply of "honey-dew," and sent out on minor but aerial
errands--although, after all, we prefer Puck and Ariel--not to speak of
those delectable personages, Cobweb, Peaseblossom, and Mustardseed.
Ariel's "oak," in our poet's hands, becomes a "vial"--"knotty entrails"
are exchanged for a "bodkin's eye"--the fine dew of the "still vexed
Bermoothes" is degraded into an "essence;" pomatum takes the place of

poetry; the enchanted lock, of an enchanted isle; and the transformation
of original imagination into ingenious fancy is completed before your
eyes. Let the admirers of Pope, like the worshippers of Cæsar of old,
"beg a hair of him for memory;" for certainly he is more at home
among hairs and curls than in any field where he has chosen to exercise
his powers.
About Pope originally there was a small, trivial, and stinted something
which did not promise even the greatness he actually attained. We do
not allude merely to his small stature, remembering that the nine-pin
Napoleon overthrew half the thrones in Europe. But he possessed sana
mens in sano copore, an erect figure, and was "every inch a man,"
although his inches were few; while in Pope, both bodily and mentally,
there lay a crooked, waspish, and petty nature. His form too faithfully
reflected his character. He was never, from the beginning to the close
of his life, a great, broad, genial being. There was an unhealthy taint
which partly enfeebled and partly corrupted him. His self-will, his
ambition, his Pariah position, as belonging to the Roman Catholic faith,
the feebleness of his constitution, the uncertainty of his real creed, and
one or two other circumstances we do not choose to name, combined to
create a life-long ulcer in his heart and temper, against which the vigour
of his mind, the enthusiasm of his literary tastes, and the warmth of his
heart, struggled with much difficulty. He had not, in short, the basis of
a truly great poet, either in imagination or in nature. Nor, with all his
incredible industry, tact, and talent, did he ever rise into the "seventh
heaven of invention." A splendid sylph let us call him--a "giant angel"
he was not.
His culture, like his genius, was rather elegant than profound. He lived
in an age when a knowledge of the classics, with a tincture of the
metaphysics of the schools, was thought a good average stock of
learning, although it was the age, too, of such mighty scholars as
Bentley, Clarke, and Warlburton. Pope seems to have glanced over a
great variety of subjects with a rapid _rechercé_ eye, not examined any
one with a quiet, deep, longing, lingering, exhaustive look. He was no
literary Behemoth, "trusting that he could draw up Jordan into his
mouth." He became thus neither an ill-informed writer, like Goldsmith,

whose ingenuity must make up for his ignorance, nor one of those
doctorum vatum, those learned poets, such as Dante, Milton, and
Coleridge, whose works alone, according at least to Buchanan, are to
obtain the rare and regal palm of immortality--
"Sola doctorum monumenta vatum
Nesciunt fati imperium severi:

Sola contemnunt Phlegethonta, et Orci
Jura superbi."
That his philosophy was empirical, is proved by his "Essay on Man,"
which, notwithstanding all its brilliant rhetoric, is the shallow version
of a shallow