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THE
POETICAL WORKS
OF
ALEXANDER POPE.
_With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes_,
BY THE
REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.
VOL. II.
M.DCCC.LVI.
THE GENIUS AND POETRY OF POPE.
Few poets during their lifetime have been at once so much admired and so
much abused as Pope. Some writers, destined to oblivion in after-ages,
have been loaded with laurels in their own time; while others, on whom
Fame was one day to "wait like a menial," have gone to the grave
neglected, if not decried and depreciated. But it was the fate of Pope
to combine in his single experience the extremes of detraction and
flattery--to have the sunshine of applause and the hail-storm of calumny
mingled on his living head; while over his dead body, as over the body
of Patroclus, there has raged a critical controversy, involving not
merely his character as a man, but his claims as a poet. For this,
unquestionably, there are some subordinate reasons. Pope's religious
creed, his political connexions, his easy circumstances, his popularity
with the upper classes, as well as his testy temper and malicious
disposition, all tended to rouse against him, while he lived, a personal
as well as public hostility, altogether irrespective of the mere merit
or demerit of his poetry. "We cannot bear a Papist to be our principal
bard," said one class. "No Tory for our translator of Homer," cried the
zealous Whigs, "Poets should be poor, and Pope is independent," growled
Grub Street. The ancients could not endure that a "poet should build an
house, but this varlet has dug a grotto, and established a clandestine
connexion between Parnassus and the Temple of Plutus." "Pope," said
others, "is hand-in-glove with Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke, and it was
never so seen before in any genuine child of genius." "He is a little
ugly insect," cried another class; "can such a misbegotten brat be a
favourite with the beautiful Apollo?" "He is as venomous and spiteful as
he is small; never was so much of the 'essence of devil' packed into
such a tiny compass," said another set; "and this, to be sure, is
England's great poet!" Besides these personal objections, there were
others of a more solid character. While all admitted the exquisite
polish and terse language of Pope's compositions, many felt that they
were too artificial--that they were often imitative--that they seldom
displayed those qualities of original thought and sublime enthusiasm
which had formed the chief characteristics of England's best bards, and
were slow to rank the author of "Eloisa and Abelard," with the creator
of "Hamlet," "Othello," and "Lear;" the author of the "Rape of the Lock"
with the author of "Paradise Lost;" the author of the "Pastorals," with
the author of the "Faery Queen;" and the author of the "Imitations of
Horace," with the author of the "Canterbury Tales." On the one hand,
Pope's ardent friends erred in classing him with or above these great
old writers; and on the other, his enemies were thus provoked to thrust
him too far down in the scale, and to deny him genius altogether. Since
his death, his fame has continued to vibrate between extremes. Lord
Byron and Lord Carlisle (the latter, in a lecture delivered in Leeds in
December 1850, and published afterwards) have placed him ridiculously
high; while Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Bowles, have underrated him. It
shall be our endeavour, in our succeeding remarks, to steer a middle
course between the parties.
Lord Carlisle commenced his able and eloquent prelection by deploring
the fact, that Pope had sunk in estimation. And yet, a few sentences
after, he told us that the "Commissioners of the Fine Arts" selected
Pope, along with Chaucer, Shakspeare, Spenser, Milton, and Dryden, to
fill the six vacant places in the New Palace of Westminster. This does
not substantiate the assertion, that Pope has sunk in estimation. Had he
sunk to any great extent, the Commissioners would not have dared to put
his name and statue beside those of the acknowledged masters of English
poetry. But apart from this, we do think that Lord Carlisle has
exaggerated the "Decline and Fall" of the empire of Pope. He is still,
with the exception, perhaps, of Cowper, the most popular poet of the
eighteenth century. His "Essay on Man," and his "Eloisa and Abelard,"
are probably in every good library, public and private, in Great
Britain. Can we say as much of Chaucer and Spenser? Passages and lines
of his poetry are stamped on the memory of all well-educated men. More
pointed sayings of Pope are afloat than of any English poet, except
Shakspeare and Young. Indeed, if frequency of quotation be the principal
proof of popularity, Pope, with Shakspeare, Young, and Spenser, is one
of the four most popular of English poets. In America, too, Lord
Carlisle found, he tells us, the most cultivated and literary portion of
that great community warmly imbued with an admiration of Pope.
What more would, or at least should, his lordship desire? Pope is, by
his own showing, a great favourite with many wherever the English
language is spoken, and that, too, a century after his death. And there
are few critics who would refuse to subscribe, on the whole, Lord
Carlisle's enumeration of the Poet's qualities; his terse and motto-like
lines--the elaborate gloss of his mock-heroic vein--the tenderness of
his pathos--the point and polished strength of his satire--the force and
_vraisemblance_ of his descriptions of character--the delicacy and
refinement of his compliments, "each of which," says Hazlitt, "is as
good as an house or estate"--and the heights of moral grandeur into
which he can at times soar, whenever he has manly indignation, or
warm-hearted patriotism, or high-minded scorn to express. If Lord
Carlisle's object, then, was to elevate Pope to the rank of a classic,
it was a superfluous task; if it was to justify the Commissioners in
placing him on a level with Chaucer, Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton,
our remarks will show that we think it as vain as superfluous.
In endeavouring to fix the rank of a poet, there are, we think, the
following elements to be analysed:--His original genius--his kind and
degree of culture--his purpose--his special faculties--the works he has
written--and the amount of impression he has made on, and impulse he has
given to, his own age and the world. In other words, what were his
native powers, and what has he done, _for_, _by_, and _with_ them?
Now, that Pope possessed genius, and genius of a high order, we
strenuously maintain. But whether this amounted to creative power, the
highest quality of the poet, is a very different question. In native
imagination, that eyesight of the soul, which sees in the rose a richer
red, in the sky a deeper azure, in the sea a more dazzling foam, in the
stars a softer and more spiritual gold, and in the sky a more dread
magnificence than nature ever gave them, that beholds the Ideal always
shining through and above the Real, and that lights the poet on to form
within a new and more gorgeous nature, the fresh creation of his own
inspired mind, Pope was not only inferior to Chaucer, Shakspeare,
Spenser, and Milton, but to Young, Thomson, Collins, Burns, Wordsworth,
Keats, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, and many other poets. His native
faculty, indeed, seems rather fine than powerful--rather timid than
daring, and resembles rather the petal of a rose peeping out into the
summer air, which seems scarce warm enough for its shrinking loveliness,
than the feather of the wing of a great eagle, dipping into the night
tempest, which raves around the inaccessible rock of his birthplace. He
was not eminently original in his thinking. In proof of this, many of
those fine sentiments which Pope has thrown into such perfect shape, and
to which he has given such dazzling burnish, are found by Watson (see
the "Adventurer") in Pascal and others. Shakspeare's wisdom, on the
other hand, can be traced to Shakspeare's brain, and no further,
although he has borrowed the plots of his plays. Who lent Chaucer his
pictures, fresh as dewdrops from the womb of the morning? Spenser's
Allegories are as native to him as his dreams; and if Milton has now and
then carried off a load which belonged to another, it was 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 sometimes been equalised by
the power of genius, and artificial things have often been made to wring
the heart or awaken the fancy, as much or more than the other class.
Think, for instance, of the words in Lear,
"Prithee, undo this button. Thank you, sir."
What more contemptibly artificial than a button? And yet, beating in the
wind of the hysterical passion which is tearing the heart of the poor
dying king, what a powerful index of misery it becomes, and its
"undoing," as the sign of the end of the tragedy, and the letting forth
of the great injured soul, has melted many to tears! When Lady Macbeth
exclaims, in that terrible crisis,
"Give me the daggers!"'
who feels not, that, although a dagger be only an artificial thing, no
natural or supernatural thing, not the flaming sword of the Cherubim
itself, could seem, in the circumstances, more fearfully sublime. What
action more artificial than dancing, and yet how grand it seems, in
Ford's heroine, who continues to dance on till the ball is finished,
while the news of "death, and death, and death" of friend, brother,
husband, are successively recounted to her--and then herself expires!
There seems no comparison between a diamond and a star, and yet a
Shakspeare or a Schiller could so describe the trembling of a diamond on
the brow say of Belshazzar when the apparition of the writing on the
wall disturbed his impious feast, that it would seem more ideal and more
magnificent than a star "trembling on the hand of God" when newly
created, or trembling on the verge of everlasting darkness, when its
hour had come. A slipper seems a very commonplace object; but how
interesting the veritable slipper of Empedocles, who flung himself into
Etna, whose slipper was disgorged by the volcano, and as a link,
connecting the seen with the unseen, the grassy earth with the burning
entrails of the eternal furnace, became intensely imaginative! A feather
in a cap (even though it were an eagle's) seems, from its position, an
object sufficiently artificial; but how affecting the black plume of
Ravenswood floating on the waves which had engulphed the proud head that
once bore it, and which old Caleb took up, dried, and placed in his
bosom!
Nor are we sure that there are _any_ objects so small or vulgar but what
genius could extract poetry from them. In Pope's hands, indeed, the
"clouded cane" and the "amber snuff-box" of Sir Plume assume no ideal
aspect; but in Shakspeare's it might have been different; and the
highest order of genius, like true catholicity of faith, counts "nothing
common or unclean." What poetry Burns has gathered up even in "Poosie
Nancy's," which had been lying unsuspected at the feet of beggars,
prostitutes, and pickpockets! What powerful imagination there is in
Crabbe's descriptions of poorhouses, prisons, and asylums; and in
Wordsworth's "Old Cumberland Beggar," who, although he lived and died in
the "eye of nature," was clothed in rags, and had the vulgar, mendicant
meal-bag slung over his shoulders! What pathos Scott extracts from that
"black bitch of a boat," which Mucklebackit, in the frenzy of his grief,
accuses for the loss of his son! Which of the lower animals less
poetical or coarser than a swine? and yet Shakspeare introduces such a
creature with great effect in "Macbeth," in that weird dialogue of the
witches--
"Where hast thou been, sister?"
"Killing swine."
And Goethe makes it ideal by mingling it with the mad revelry of the
"Walpurgis Night"--
"An able sow, with old Baubo upon her.
Is worthy of glory and worthy of honour."
The whole truth on this vexed question may perhaps be summed up in the
following propositions:--1st, No object, natural or artificial, is _per
se_ out of the province of imagination; 2d, There is no _infinite_ gulf
between natural and artificial objects, or between the higher and lower
degrees of either, as subjects for the idealising power of poetry; 3d,
Ere any object natural or artificial, become poetical, it must be
subjected more or less to the transfiguring power of imagination; and,
4th, Some objects in nature, and some in art, need less of this
transforming magic than others, and are thus _intrinsically_, although
not _immeasurably_, superior in adaptation to the purposes of poetry.
The great point, after all, is, What eye beholds objects, whether
natural or artificial? Is it a poetical eye or not? For given a poet's
eye, then it matters little on what object that eye be fixed, it becomes
poetical; where there is intrinsic poetry--as in mountains, the sea, the
sky, the stars--it comes rushing out to the silent spell of genius;
where there is less--as in artificial objects, or the poorer productions
of nature--the mind of the poet must exert itself tenfold, and shed on
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 Caesar 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 _recherce_ 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 system of naturalism. And one may accommodate to
him the well-known saying of Lyndhurst about Lord Brougham, "who would
have made a capital Chancellor if he had had only a little law;" so Pope
was very well qualified to have translated Homer, barring his ignorance
of Greek. But every page of his writings proves a wide and diversified
knowledge--a knowledge, too, which he has perfectly under control--which
he can make to go a great way--and by which, with admirable skill, he
can subserve alike his moral and literary purpose. But the question now
arises--What was his purpose? Was it worthy of his powers? Was it high,
holy, and faithfully pursued? No poet, we venture to say, can be great
without a great purpose. "Purpose is the edge and point of character; it
is the stamp and superscription of genius; it is the direction on the
letter of talent. Character without it is blunt and torpid; talent
without it is a letter which, undirected, goes nowhere; genius without
it is bullion, sluggish, splendid, and uncirculating." Now, Pope's
purpose seems, on the whole, dim and uncertain. He is indifferent to
destruction, and careless about conserving. He is neither an infidel nor
a Christian; no Whig, but no very ardent Tory either. He seems to wish
to support morality, but his support is stumbling and precarious;
although, on the other hand, notwithstanding his frequent coarseness of
language and looseness of allusion, he exhibits no desire to overturn or
undermine it. His bursts of moral feeling are very beautiful (such as
that containing the noble lines--
"Vice is undone if she forgets her earth,
And stoops from angels to the dregs of birth.
But 'tis the fall degrades her to a whore:
Let greatness own her and she's mean no more.
Her birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess,
Chaste matrons praise her, and grave bishops bless.
In golden chains the willing world she draws,
And hers the gospel is, and hers the laws;
Mounts the tribunal, lifts her scarlet head,
And sees pale Virtue carted in her stead.")
But they are brief, seem the result of momentary moods rather than the
spray of a strong, steady current; and he soon turns from them to the
expression of his petty chagrins and personal animosities. In satire, he
has not the indomitable pace and deep-mouthed bellow of a Juvenal,
pursuing his object like a bloodhound: he resembles more a half-angry,
half-playful terrier. To obtain a terse and musical expression for his
thought is his artistic purpose, but that of his mind and moral nature
is not so apparent in his poetry. Indeed, we are tempted at times to
class him with his own sylphs in this respect, as well as in the
elegance and swiftness of his genius. They neither belonged to heaven
nor hell, but vibrated between in graceful gyrations. They laughed at,
and toyed with, all things--never rising to dangerous heights, never
sinking into profound abysses--fancying a lock a universe, and a
universe only a larger lock--dancing like evening ephemerae in the
sunbeam, which was to be their sepulchre, and shutting their tiny eyes
to all the solemn responsibilities, grave uncertainties, and mysterious
destinies of human nature. And so, too often, did their poet.
Pope's special faculties are easily seen, and may be briefly enumerated.
Destitute of the highest imagination, and perhaps of constructive
power--(he has produced many brilliant parts, and many little, but no
large wholes)--he is otherwise prodigally endowed. He has a keen,
strong, clear intellect, which, if it seldom reaches sublimity, never
fails to eliminate sense. He has wit of a polished and vigorous
kind--less easy, indeed, than Addison's, the very curl of whose lip was
crucifixion to his foe. This wit, when exasperated into satire, is very
formidable, for, like Addison's, it does its work with little noise.
Pope whispers poetic perdition--he deals in drops of concentrated
bitterness--he stabs with a poisoned bodkin--he touches his enemies into
stone with the light and playful finger of a fairy--and his more
elaborate invectives glitter all over with the polish of profound
malignity. His knowledge of human nature, particularly of woman's heart,
is great, but seems more the result of impish eavesdropping than of that
thorough and genial insight which sympathy produces. He has listened at
the keyhole, not by any "Open Sesame" entered the chamber. He has rather
painted manners than men. His power of simulating passion is great; but
the passion must, in general, be mingled with unnatural elements ere he
can realise it--the game must be putrid ere he can enjoy its flavour. He
has no humour, at least in his poetry. It is too much of an unconscious
outflow, and partakes too much of the genial and the human nature for
him. His fancy is lively and copious, but its poetical products often
resemble the forced fruits of a 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 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 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.
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