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

Dunces, and say, "Behold the work of my
hands!" It never seems to have occurred to him that his poem was
destined to be an everlasting memorial, not only of his enemies, but of
the annoyance he had met from them--at once of his strength in
crushing, and his weakness 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