The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, vol 2 | Page 8

enlightened" to
see sights of beauty and mystery which to the other are denied. Keats
could have comprised all the poetry of "Windsor Forest" into one
sonnet or line; indeed, has he not done so, where, describing his soul
following the note of the nightingale into the far depths of the woods,
where she is pouring out her heart in song, he says--
"And with thee fade away into the forest dim?"
The "Essay on Criticism" is rather a wonderful, intellectual, and artistic
feat, than a true poem. It is astonishing as the work of a boy of nineteen,
and contains a unique collection of clever and sparkling sentences,
displaying the highest powers of acuteness and assimilation, if not
much profound and original insight or genius. This poem suggests the
wish that more of our critics would write in verse. The music might
lessen the malice, and set off the commonplace to advantage, so that if
there were no "reason," there might be at least "rhyme." His "Lines to
the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" are too elaborate and artificial for
the theme. It is a tale of intrigue, murder, and suicide, set to a musical
snuff-box! His "Rape of the Lock" we have already characterised. It is
an "Iliad in a nutshell," an Epic of Lilliput, where all the proportions
are accurately observed, and where the finishing is so exact and
admirable, that you fancy the author to have had microscopic eyes. It
contains certainly the most elegant and brilliant badinage, the most

graceful raillery, the most finished nonsense, and one of the most
exquisitely-managed machineries in the language. His "Eloisa and
Abelard," a poem beautiful and almost unequalled in execution, is ill
chosen in subject. He compels you indeed to weep, but you blame and
trample on your tears after they are shed. Pope in this poem, as Shelley
in the "Cenci," has tried to extract beauty from moral deformity, and to
glorify putrefaction. But who can long love to gaze at worms, however
well painted, or will be disposed to pardon the monstrous choice of a
dead or demon bride for the splendour of her wedding-garment? The
passion of the Eloisa and that of the Cenci were both indeed facts; but
many facts should be veiled statues in the Temple of Truth. To do,
however, both Pope and Shelley justice, they touch their painful and
shocking themes with extreme delicacy. "Dryden," well remarks
Campbell, "would have given but a coarse draught of Eloisa's passion."
Pope's Epistles, Satires, Imitations, &c., contain much of the most
spirited sense and elegant sarcasm in literature. The portraits of
"Villars" and "Atticus" will occur to every reader as masterpieces in
power, although we deem the latter grossly unjust to a good and great
man. His Homer is rather an adaptation than a translation--far less a
"transfusion" of the Grecian bard. Pope does not, indeed, clothe the old
blind rhapsodist with a bag-wig and sword; but he does all short of this
to make him a fine modern gentleman. Scott, we think, could have best
rendered Homer in his ballad-rhyme. Chapman is Chapman, but he is
not Homer. Pope is Pope, and Hobbes is Hobbes, and Sotheby is
Sotheby, and Cowper is Cowper, each doing his best to render Homer,
but none of them is the grand old Greek, whose lines are all simple and
plain as brands, but like brands pointed on their edges with fire.
The "Essay on Man" ought to have been called an "Epigram on Man,"
or, better still, should have been propounded as a riddle, to which the
word "Man" was to supply the solution. But an antithesis, epigram, or
riddle on man of 1300 lines, is rather long. It seems so especially as
there is no real or new light cast in it on man's nature or destiny. (We
refer our readers to the notes of Dr Croly's edition for a running
commentary of confutation to the "Essay on Man" distinguished by
solid and unanswerable acuteness of argument.) But such an eloquent
and ingenious puzzle as it is! It might have issued from the work-basket

of Titania herself. It is another evidence of Pope's greatness in trifles.
How he would have shone in fabricating the staves of the ark, or the
fringes of the tabernacle!
The "Dunciad" is in many respects the ablest, the most elaborate, and
the most characteristic of Pope's poems. In embalming insignificance
and impaling folly he seems to have found, at last, his most congenial
work. With what apparently sovereign contempt, masterly ease, artistic
calm, and judicial gravity, does he set about it! And once his museum
of dunces is completed, with what dignity--the little tyrant that he
was!--does he march through it, and with what complacency does he
point to his slain and dried