The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, vol 2 | Page 7

hothouse rather than those of a natural
soil and climate. His description of Sporus, lauded by Byron as a piece
of imagination, is exceedingly artificial and far-fetched in its figures--a
mere mass of smoked gumflowers. Compare for fancy the speeches of
Mercutio, in "Romeo and Juliet," the "Rape of the Lock," if we would
see the difference between a spontaneous and artificial outpouring of
images, between a fancy as free as fervid, and one lashing itself into
productiveness. His power of describing natural objects is far from
first-rate; he enumerates instead of describing; he omits nothing in the
scene except the one thing needful--the bright poetical gleam or haze
which ought to have been there. There is the "grass" but not the
"splendour"--the "flower" but not the "glory." In depicting character, it
is very different. His likenesses of men and women, so far as manners,
external features, and the contrasts produced by the accidents of
circumstances and the mutation of affairs, are inimitable. His power of
complimenting is superior even to that of Louis XIV. He picks out the
one best quality in a man, sets it in gold, and presents it as if he were
conferring instead of describing a noble gift.
"Would you be blest, despise low joys, low gains,
Disdain whatever
Cornbury disdains;
Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains."
Pope's language seems as if it were laboriously formed by himself for
his peculiar shape of mind, habits of thought, and style of poetry.
Compared to all English before him, Pope's English is a new although a
lesser language. He has so cut down, shorn, and trimmed the broad old

oak of Shakspeare's speech, that it seems another tree altogether.
Everything is so terse, so clear, so pointed, so elaborately easy, so
monotonously brilliant, that you must pause to remember. "These are
the very copulatives, diphthongs, and adjectives of Hooker, Milton, and
Jeremy Taylor." The change at first is pleasant, and has been generally
popular; but those who know and love our early authors, soon miss
their deep organ-tones, their gnarled strength, their intricate but intense
sweetness, their varied and voluminous music, their linked chains of
lightning, and feel the difference between the fabricator of clever lines
and sparkling sentences, and the former of great passages and works. In
keeping with his style is his versification, the incessant tinkling of a
sheep-bell--sweet, small, monotonous--producing perfectly-melodious
single lines, but no grand interwoven swells and well-proportioned
masses of harmony. "Pope," says Hazlitt, "has turned Pegasus into a
rocking-horse." The noble gallop of Dryden's verse is exchanged for a
quick trot. And there is not even a point of comparison between his
sweet sing-song, and the wavy, snow-like, spirit-like motion of Milton's
loftier passages; or the gliding, pausing, fitful, river-like progress of
Shakspeare's verse; or the fretted fury, and "torrent-rapture" of brave
old Chapman in his translation of Homer; or the rich, long-drawn-out,
slow-swimming, now soft-languishing, and now full-gushing melody
of Spenser's "Faery Queen."--Yet, within his own sphere, Pope was, as
Scott calls him, a "Deacon of his craft;" he aimed at, and secured,
correctness and elegance; his part is not the highest, but in it he
approaches absolute perfection; and with all his monotony of manner
and versification, he is one of the most interesting of writers, and many
find a greater luxury in reading his pages than those of any other poet.
He is the facile princeps of those poetical writers who have written for,
and are so singularly appreciated by, the fastidious--that class who are
more staggered by faults than delighted with beauties.
Our glance at his individual works must be brief and cursory. His "Ode
to Solitude" is the most simple and natural thing he ever wrote, and in it
he seems to say to nature, "Vale, longum vale." His "Pastorals" have an
unnatural and luscious sweetness. He has sugared his milk; it is not, as
it ought to be, warm from the cow, and fresh as the clover. How
different his "Rural Life" from the rude, rough pictures of Theocritus,

and the delightfully true and genial pages of the "Gentle Shepherd!"
His "Windsor Forest" is an elegant accumulation of sweet sonnets and
pleasant images, but the freshness of the dew is not resting on every
bud and blade. No shadowy forms are seen retiring amidst the glades of
the forest; no Uriels seem descending on the sudden slips of afternoon
sunshine which pierce athwart the green or brown masses of foliage;
and you cannot say of his descriptions that
"Visions, as poetic eyes avow,
Hang on each leaf and cling to every
bough."
Shelley studied the scenery of his fine poem, "Alastor," in the same
shades with Pope; but he had, like Jonathan of old, touched his lips
with a rod dipped in poetic honey, and his "eyes were