burden to himself and his readers. [be now read by those who have the paSpeaking bluntly, indeed, we admit that tience. his enemies under feigned names and then disavowed his attacks; the unfounded suspicions which led him to malign so pure a character as Addison; and, worst of all, the fact-only too probable - of his extorting 1,000l. from the Duchess of Marlborough for the suppression of a satirical passage. lying is a vice, and that Pope was in a The problem may be suggested to small way one of the most consummate casuists how far the iniquity of a lie liars that ever lived. He speaks, himself, should be measured by its immediate of "equivocating pretty genteelly" in re- purpose, or how far it is aggravated by gard to one of his peccadilloes. But the enormous mass of superincumbent Pope's equivocation is, to the equivoca- falsehoods which it inevitably brings in tion of ordinary men, what a tropical fern its train. We cannot condemn very is to the stunted representatives of the seriously the affected coyness which tries same species in England. It grows un- to conceal a desire for publication under til the fowls of the air can rest on its an apparent yielding to extortion; but branches. His disposition, in short, we must certainly admit that the stomach amounts to a monomania. That a man of any other human being of whom a with intensely irritable nerves, and so record has been preserved would have fragile in constitution that his life might, revolted at the thought of wading through without exaggeration, be called a "long such a waste of mud to secure so paltry disease," should defend himself by the an end. Moreover, this is only one innatural weapons of the weak, equivoca- stance, and by no means the worst intion and subterfuge, when exposed to the stance, of Pope's regular practice in such brutal horseplay common in that day, is matters. Almost every publication of indeed not surprising. But Pope's de- his life was attended with some sort of light in artifice was something phenome-mystification passing into downright nal. He could hardly "drink tea without falsehood, and, at times, injurious to the a stratagem," or, as Lady Bolingbroke character of his dearest friends. Add to put it, was a politician about cabbages this all the cases in which Pope attacked and turnips; and certainly he did not despise the arts known to politicians on a larger stage. Never, surely, did all the arts of the most skilful diplomacy give rise to a series of intrigues more complex than those which attended the publication of the "P. T. letters." An ordinary man says that he is obliged to publish by request of friends, and we regard the transparent device as, at most, a venial offence. But in Pope's hands this simple trick becomes a complex apparatus of plots within plots, which have only been unravelled by the persevering labours of most industrious literary detectives. The whole story is given for the first time at full length in Mr. Elwin's edition of Pope, and the revelation borders upon the incredible. How Pope became for a time two men ; how in one character he worked upon the wretched Curll through mysterious emissaries until the practical bookseller undertook to publish the letters Admitting his independence, and not already privately printed by Pope him- inquiring too closely into his prayers, self; how Pope in his other character can we forget that the gentleman who protested vehemently against the publi- could sleep without a poem in his head cation and disavowed all complicity in called up a servant four times in one night the preparations; how he set the House of "the dreadful winter of Forty of Lords in motion to suppress the edi- supply him with paper, lest he should tion; and how, meanwhile, he took lose a thought? Or what is the value of ingenious precautions to frustrate the a professed indifference to Dennis from interference which he provoked; how in the man distinguished beyond all other the course of these manoeuvres his gen-writers for the bitterness of his resentteel equivocation swelled into lying on ment against all small critics; who disthe most stupendous scale-all this figured his best poems by his petty venstory, with its various ins and outs, may geance for old attacks; and who could The insincerity which degraded Pope's life detracts from our pleasure in his poetry. Take, for example, the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, which is amongst his most perfect works. Some of the boasts in it, as we shall presently remark, are apparently quite justified by the facts. But what are we to say to such a passage as this?. was not born for courts or great affairs; pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers; Can sleep without a poem in my head, Nor know if Dennis be alive or dead. to not refrain from sneering at poor Dennis, | ment; he cast it roughly into form; even in the Prologue which he conde- brooded over it; retouched it again and scended to write for the benefit of his again; and when he had brought it to dying antagonist? the very highest polish of which his art was capable, placed it in a pigeon-hole to be fitted, when the opportunity offered, into an appropriate corner of his mosaicwork. We can see him at work, for example, in the passage about Addison and the celebrated concluding couplet. The epigrams in which his poetry abounds have obviously been composed in the same fashion; for that "masterpiece of man," as South is made to call it in the Dunciad, is only produced in perfection when the labour which would have made an "ode has been concentrated upon a couple of lines. There is a celebrated recipe for dressing a lark, if we remember rightly, in which the lark is placed inside a snipe, and the snipe in a woodcock, and so on till you come to a turkey, or if procurable, to an ostrich; then, the mass having been properly stewed, the superincumbent envelopes are all thrown away, and the essences of the whole are supposed to be embodied in the original nucleus. So the perfect epigram, at which Pope is constantly aiming, should be the quintessence of a whole volume of reflection. Such literary cookery implies not only labour, but a certain vividness of thought and feeling. The poet must put his soul into the work as well as his artistic power. Thus, if we may take Pope's most vigorous expressions as an indication of his strongest convictions, and check their conclusions by his personal history and by the general tendency of his writings, we might succeed in putting together something like a satisfactory statement of the moral system which he expressed forcibly because he believed in it sincerely. Thus we are always pursued, in reading Pope, by disagreeable misgivings. We don't know what comes from the heart, and what from the lips; when the real man is speaking, and when we are only listening to old commonplaces skilfully vamped. There is always, if we please, a bad interpretation to be placed upon his finest sentiments. His indignation against the vicious is confused with his hatred of personal enemies; he protests most loudly that he is honest when he is "equivocating most genteelly; his independence may be called selfishness or avarice; his toleration simple indifference; and even his affection for his friends a decorous picture which will never lead him to the slightest sacrifice of his own vanity or comfort. A critic of the highest order is provided with an Ithuriel spear, which discriminates the sham sentiments from the true. As a banker's clerk can tell a bad coin by its ring, on the counter, without need of a testing apparatus, the true critic can instinctively estimate the amount of bullion in Pope's epigrammatic tinsel. But criticism of this kind, as Pope truly says, is as rare as poetical genius. Humbler writers must be content to take their weights and measures, or, in other words, to test their first impressions, by such external evidence as is available. They must proceed cautiously in these delicate matters, and instead of leaping to the truth by a rapid intuition, patiently inquire what light is thrown upon Pope's sincerity by the recorded events of his life, and a careful cross-examination of the various witnesses to his character. They must, indeed, keep in mind Mr. Ruskin's excellent canon,- that good fruit, even in moralizing, can only be borne by a good tree. Where Pope has succeeded in casting into enduring form some valuable moral sentiment, we may therefore give him credit for having at least felt it sincerely. If he did not always act upon it, the weakness is not peculiar to Pope. Time, indeed, has partly done the work for us. In Pope, more than in almost any other writer, the grain has sifted itself from the chaff. The jewels have remained after the flimsy embroidery in which they were fixed has fallen into decay. Such a result was natural from his mode of composition. He caught at some inspiration of the mo Without, however, following the proofs in detail, let us endeavour to give some statement of the result. What, in fact, did Pope learn by his study of man, such as it was? What does he tell us about the character of human beings and their positions in the universe which is either original or marked by the freshness of independent thought? Perhaps the most characteristic vein of reflection is that which is embodied in his greatest work, the Dunciad. There, at least, we have Pope speaking energetically and sincerely. He really detests, abjures, and abominates as impious and heretical, the worship of the great goddess Dulness, without a trace of mental reservation. His style bursts its usual fetters. We have little of that rocking-horse ver- Of systems possible, if 'tis confest where the second line exactly echoes established rights, and pandering to the worst passions of ignorant readers; no writer who could be fitly called, like Concanen, A cold, long-winded native of the deep, and fitly sentenced to dive where Fleet Ditch Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames; notony. The Dunciad often flows in a continuous stream of eloquence, instead of dribbling out in little jets of epigram. and most certainly we must deny the If their are fewer points, there are more present applicability of the note upon frequent gushes of sustained rhetoric." Magazines," compiled by Pope, or Even when Pope condescends and he rather by Warburton, for the episcopal condescends much too often to pelt bludgeon is perceptible in the prose dehis antagonists with mere filth, he does scription. They are not at present "the it with a certain boisterous vigour. He eruption of every miserable scribbler, laughs out. He catches something from his patron Swift when he quite lost their point. The legitimate drama, so theatrical critics tell us, has not quite shaken off the rivalry of sensational scenery and idiotic burlesque, though possibly we do not produce absurdities equal to that which, as Pope tells us, was actually introduced by Theobald, in which the scum of every dirty newspaper, or fragments of fragments picked up from every dirty dunghill . . . equally the disLaughs and shakes in Rabelais's easy chair. His lungs seem to be fuller and his voice grace of human wit, morality, decency, and common sense." But if the transto lose for the time its tricks of mincing lator of the Dunciad into modern phraseaffectation. Here, indeed, there can be ology would have some difficulty in findno question of insincerity. Pope's scorn of folly is to be condemned only so far ing a head for every cap, there are peras it was connected with too bitter a ha-haps some satirical stings which have not tred of fools. He has suffered, as Swift foretold, by the insignificance of the enemies against whom he rages with superfluous vehemence. But for Pope, no one in this generation would have heard of Arnall and Moore, and Breval and Bezaleel Morris, and fifty more ephemeral denizens of Grub Street. The fault is, indeed, inherent in the plan. It is in some degree creditable to Pope that his satire was on the whole justified, so far as it could be justified, by the correctness of his judgment. The only great man whom he has seriously assaulted is Bentley; and to Pope, Bentley was of necessity There is still facetiousness which reminds not the greatest of classical critics, but us too forcibly that Hell rises, Heaven descends, and dance on earth Gods, imps, and monsters, music, rage, and A fire, a jig, a battle and a ball, Gentle dulness ever loves a joke, Dulness is sacred in a sound divine. the tasteless mutilator of Milton. The misfortune is that the more just his satire, the more perishable is its interest; and even sermons, for which we may and if we regard the Dunciad simply as apologise on the ground that an assault upon the vermin who then infested literature, we must consider him as a man who should use a steam-hammer Here and there, too, if we may trust certo crack a flea. Unluckily for ourselves, tain stern reviewers, there are writers however, it cannot be admitted so easily who have learnt the principle that that Curll and Dennis and the rest had a merely temporary interest. Regarded and Pope as types of literary nuisances does not condescend in his poetry, though the want is partly supplied in the notes, to indulge in much personal detail they may be said by cynics to have a more enduring vitality. Of course there is at the present day no such bookseller as Curll, living by piratical invasions of Index learning turns no student pale, Proceed, great days! till learning fly the shore, Till Thames see Eton's sons forever play, that alive, would find an ample occupation for his talents in a worthy filling out of Pope's incomplete sketch. But though I feel, I must endeavour to resist, the temptation of indicating some of the probable objects of his antipathy. Pope's gallant assault on the common Born a goddess, Dulness never dies. enemy indicates, meanwhile, his characMen, we know it on high authority, are teristic attitude. Pope is the incarnation still mostly fools. If Pope be in error, of the literary spirit. He is the most it is not so much that his adversary is be- complete representative in our language neath him, but that she is unassailable of the intellectual instincts which find by wit or poetry. Weapons of the most their natural expression in pure literaethereal temper spend their keenness in ture. The complete antithesis to that vain against the "anarch old" whose spirit is the evil principle which Pope atpower lies in utter insensibility. It is tacks as dulness. This false goddess is fighting with a mist, and firing cannon- the literary Ahriman; and Pope's natural balls into a mudheap. As well rave antipathies, somewhat exaggerated by his against the force of gravitation, or com- personal passions and weaknesses to explain that our gross bodies must be travagant proportions, express themselves nourished by solid food. If, however, fully in his great mock epic. His theory we should be rather grateful than other- may be expressed in a parody of Nelson's wise to a man who is sanguine enough to immortal advice to his midshipmen: "Be believe that satire can be successful an honest man and hate dulness as you against stupidity, and that Grub Street, if do the devil." Dulness generates the it cannot be exterminated, can at least be asphyxiating atmosphere in which no true lashed into humility, we might perhaps literature can thrive. It oppresses the complain that Pope has taken rather too lungs and irritates the nerves of men limited a view of the subject. Dulness whose keen brilliant intellects mark them has other avatars besides the literary. as the natural servants of literature. In the last and finest book, Pope attempts Seen from this point of view, there is to complete his plan by exhibiting the an honourable completeness in Pope's influence of dulness upon theology and career. Possibly a modern subject of science. The huge torpedo benumbs literature may, without paradox, express every faculty of the human mind, and a certain gratitude to Pope for a virtue paralyzes all the Muses, except "mad which he would certainly be glad to imiMathesis," which, indeed, does not carry tate. Pope was the first man who made on so internecine a war with the general an independence by literature. First and enemy. The design is commendable, last, he seems to have received over and executed, so far as Pope was on a 8,000l. for his translation of Homer, a level with his task, with infinite spirit; sum then amply sufficient to enable him but, however excellent the poetry, the to live in comfort. No sum at all comlogic is defective, and the description of parable to this was ever received by a the evil inadequate. Pope has but a poet or novelist until the era of Scott and vague conception of the mode in which Byron. Now, without challenging admidulness might become the leading force ration for Pope on the simple ground that in politics, lower religion till it became a he made his fortune, it is impossible to mere cloak for selfishness, and make exaggerate the importance of this feat at learning nothing but laborious and the time. A contemporary who, whatpedantic trifling. Had his powers been ever his faults, was a still more brilliant equal to his goodwill, we might have had example than Pope of the purely literary a satire far more elevated than anything qualities, suggests a curious parallel. which he has attempted; for a man must Voltaire, as he tells us, was so weary of be indeed a dull student of history who the humiliations that dishonour letters, does not recognize the vast influence of that to stay his disgust he resolved to dulness-worship on the whole period make "what scoundrels call a great forwhich has intervened between Pope and tune." Some of Voltaire's means of ourselves. Nay, it may be feared that it reaching this end appear to have been will be yet some time before education more questionable than Pope's. But bills and societies for the teaching of both of these men of genius early secured women will have begun to dissipate the their independence by raising themselves evil. A modern satirist, were satire still permanently above the need of writing ning to waste in desperate attempts to win money at the cost of worthier fame. for money. The use, too, which Pope made of his fortune was thoroughly honourable. We scarcely give due credit, as Pope's merit, indeed, has been lowered a rule, to the man who has the rare merit on a ground which, to our thinking, is in of distinctly recognizing his true vocation his favour. As a Roman Catholic, and in life, and adhering to it with unflinch- as the adherent of a defeated party, he ing pertinacity. Probably the fact that such virtue generally brings a sufficient personal reward in this world seems to dispense with the necessity of additional praise. But call it a virtuous or merely a useful quality, we must at least admit that it is the necessary ground-work of a thoroughly satisfactory career. Pope, who, from his infancy had Not Fortune's worshipper, nor Fashion's fool, had put himself out of the race for pecuniary` reward. But then Pope's loyal adherence to his friends, though, like all his virtues, subject to some deduction, is really a touching feature in his character. His Catholicism was of the most nominal kind. He adhered in name to a depressed church chiefly because he could not bear to give pain to the parents whom Lisped in numbers, for the numbers came, he loved with an exquisite tenderness. Granting that he would not have had gained by his later numbers a secure much chance of winning tangible rewards position, and used his position to go on by the baseness of a desertion, he at rhyming to the end of his life. He never least recognized his true position; and failed to do his very best. He regarded instead of being soured by his exclusion the wealth which he had earned as a from the general competition, or wasting retaining fee, not as a discharge from his his life in frivolous regrets, he preserved duties. Comparing him with his contem- a spirit of tolerance and independence, poraries, we see how vast was the advan- and had a full right to the boasts in tage. Elevated above Grubstreet, he had which he possibly indulged a little too no temptation to manufacture rubbish or freely:descend to actual meanness like poor De Foe. Independent of patronage, he was not forced to become a "tame cat" in the house of a duchess, like his friend Gay. Standing apart from politics, he was free from those disappointed pangs which contributed to the embitterment of the later years of Swift, dying "like a poisoned rat in a hole;" he had not, like Bolingbroke, to affect a philosophical contempt for the game in which he could no longer take a part; nor was he even, Is this guardian of virtue quite immaclike Addison and Steele, induced to ulate, and the morality which he preaches "give up to party what was meant for quite of the most elevated kind? We mankind." He was not a better man must admit, of course, that he does not than some of these, and certainly not sound the depths, or soar to the heights, better than Goldsmith and Johnson in the in which men of loftier genius are at succeeding generation. Yet, when we home. He is not a mystic, but a man of think of the amount of good intellect that the world. He never, as we have already ran to waste in the purlieus of Grub Street, said, quits the sphere of ordinary and or in hunting for pensions in ministerial rather obvious maxims about the daily ante-chambers, we feel a certain grati- life of society, or quits it at his peril. tude to the one literary magnate of the His independence is not like Milton's, century, whose devotion, it is true, had a that of an ancient prophet, consoling very tangible reward, but whose devotion himself by celestial visions for a world was yet continuous, and free from any given over to baseness and frivolity; nor distractions but those of a constitutional like Shelley's, that of a vehement revoirritability. Nay, if we compare Pope lutionist, who has declared open war to some of the later writers who have against the existing order; it is the indewrung still princelier rewards from for-pendence of a modern gentleman, with a tune, the result is not unfavourable. If competent fortune, enjoying a time of poor Scott had been as true to his calling, his life, so far superior to Pope's in most other respects, would not have presented the melancholy contrast of genius run Admitting that the last line suggests a slight qualm, the portrait suggested in the rest is about as faithful as one can expect a man to paint from himself. political and religious calm. And therefore his morality is in the main the expression of the conclusions reached by supreme good sense, or, as he puts it, |