cent festivals, thronged with noble dames and courteous knights, produced the first efforts of wit and fancy. I am still further to hope that, together with other specimens of obsolete literature in general, hinted at before, the many references I have made in particular to romances, the necessary appendage of ancient chivalry, will also plead their pardon. For however monstrous and unnatural these compositions may appear to this age of reason and refinement, they merit more attention than the world is willing to bestow. They preserve many curious historical facts, and throw considerable light on the nature of the feudal system. They are the pictures of ancient usages and customs, and represent the manners, genius, and character of our ancestors. Above all, such are their terrible graces of magic and enchantment, so magnificently marvelous are their fictions and fablings, that they contribute in a wonderful degree to rouse and invigorate all the powers of imagination, to store the fancy with those sublime and alarming images which true poetry best delights to display. JOSEPH WARTON AN ESSAY ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF POPE 1756, 1782 [The two volumes of this work were published with an interval of twenty-six years between them; but the opening dedication and the concluding summary, here reproduced, show the same attitude toward the nature of poetry, — anticipating certain elements of the "romantic" position.] - DEDICATION I REVERE the memory of Pope, I respect and honor his abilities; but I do not think him at the head of his profession. In other words, in that species of poetry wherein Pope excelled, he is superior to all mankind; and I only say that this species of poetry is not the most excellent one of the art. We do not, it should seem, sufficiently attend to the difference there is betwixt a man of wit, a man of sense, and a true poet. Donne and Swift were undoubtedly men of wit, and men of sense, but what traces have they left of pure poetry? It is remarkable that Dryden said of Donne, "He was the greatest wit, though not the greatest poet, of this nation." Fontenelle and La Motte are entitled to the former character, but what can they urge to gain the latter? Which of these characters is the most valuable and useful, is entirely out of the question; all I plead for is to have, their several provinces kept distinct from each other, and to impress on the reader that a clear head and acute understanding are not sufficient, alone, to make a poet; that the most solid observations on human life, expressed with the utmost elegance and brevity, are morality, and not poetry; that the Epistles of Boileau in rhyme are no more poetical than the Characters of La Bruyère in prose; and that it is a creative and glowing imagination, acer spiritus ac vis, and that alone, that can stamp a writer with this exalted and very uncommon character, which so few possess, and of which so few can properly judge. For one person who can adequately relish and enjoy a work of imagination, twenty are to be found who can taste and judge of observations on familiar life and the manners of the age. The Satires of Ariosto are more read than the Orlando Furioso, or even Dante. Are there so many cordial admirers of Spenser and-7 Milton as of Hudibras, if we strike out of the number of these supposed admirers those who appear such out of fashion, and not of feeling? Swift's Rhapsody on Poetry is far more popular than Akenside's noble Ode to Lord Huntingdon. The Epistles on the Characters of Men and Women, and your sprightly Satires, my good friend,' are more frequently perused and quoted than L'Allegro and Il Penseroso of Milton. Had you written only these satires, you would, indeed, have gained the title of a man of wit, and a man of sense, but, I am confident, would not insist on being denominated a poet merely on their account. Non satis est puris versum perscribere verbis.2 It is amazing this matter should ever have been mistaken, when Horace has taken particular and repeated pains to settle and adjust the opinion in question. He has more than once disclaimed all right and title to the name of poet on the score of his ethic and satiric pieces. Neque enim concludere versum are lines often repeated, but whose meaning is not extended and weighed as it ought to be. Nothing can be more judicious than the method he prescribes, of trying whether any composition be essentially poetical or not, which is, to drop entirely the measures and numbers, and transpose and invert the order of the words, and in this unadorned manner to peruse the passage. If there be really in it a true poetical spirit, all your inversions and transpositions will not disguise and extinguish it, but it will retain its lustre, like a diamond unset and thrown back into the rubbish of the mine. Let us make a little experiment on the following well-known lines: "Yes, you despise the man that is confined to books, who rails at human-kind from his study, though what he learns, he speaks, and may perhaps advance some general maxims, or may be right by chance. The coxcomb bird, so grave and so talka 1 Edward Young. 2 "It does not suffice to write verse in ordinary language." tive, that cries Whore, Knave, and Cuckold, from his cage, though he rightly call many a passenger, you hold him no philosopher. And yet, such is the fate of all extremes, men may be read too much, as well as books. We grow more partial, for the sake of the observer, to observations which we ourselves make; less so to written wisdom, because another's. Maxims are drawn from notions, and those from guess."1 What shall we say of this passage? Why, that it is most excellent sense, but just as poetical as the Qui fit Macenas2 of the author who recommends this method of trial. Take ten lines of the Iliad, Paradise Lost, or even of the Georgic of Virgil, and see whether, by any process of critical chemistry, you can lower and reduce them to the tameness of prose. You will find that they will appear like Ulysses in his disguise of rags, still a hero, though lodged in the cottage of the herdsman Eumæus. The sublime and the pathetic are the two chief nerves of all genuine poetry. What is there transcendently sublime or pathetic in Pope? In his works there is, indeed, nihil inane, nihil arcessitum; puro tamen fonti quam magno flumini propior,3 as the excellent Quintilian remarks of Lysias. And because I am, perhaps, unwilling to speak out in plain English, I will adopt the following passage of Voltaire, which in my opinion as exactly characterizes Pope as it does his model Boileau, for whom it was originally designed: "Incapable peut-être du sublime qui élève l'âme, et du sentiment qui l'attendrit, mais fait pour éclairer ceux à qui la nature accorda l'un et l'autre, laborieux, sévère, précis, pur, harmonieux, il devint, enfin, le poète de la Raison." Our English poets may, I think, be disposed in four different classes and degrees. In the first class I would place our only three sublime and pathetic poets: Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton. In the second class should be ranked such as possessed the true poetical genius in a more moderate degree, but who had noble talents for moral, ethical, and panegyrical poesy. At the head of these are Dryden, Prior, Addison, Cowley, Waller, Garth, Fenton, Gay, Denham, Parnell. In the third class may be placed men of wit, of elegant taste and lively fancy in describing familiar life, though not the higher scenes of poetry. 1 A paraphrase of the opening lines of Pope's Epistle I (Moral Essays). • Horace's first satire. "Nothing superfluous, nothing far-fetched; yet he is more like a pure spring than a great river." Here may be numbered Butler, Swift, Rochester, Donne, Dorset, Oldham. In the fourth class, the mere versifiers, however smooth and mellifluous some of them may be thought, should be disposed; such as Pitt, Sandys, Fairfax, Broome, Buckingham, Lansdowne. This enumeration is not intended as a complete catalogue of writers, and in their proper order, but only to mark out briefly the different species of our celebrated authors. In which of these classes Pope deserves to be placed, the following work is intended to determine. CONCLUSION Thus have I endeavored to give a critical account, with freedom, but it is hoped with impartiality, of each of Pope's works; by which review it will appear that the largest portion of them is of the didactic, moral, and satiric kind, and consequently not of the most poetic species of poetry. Whence it is manifest that good sense and judgment were his characteristical excellencies, rather than fancy and invention; not that the author of The Rape of the Lock and Eloisa can be thought to want imagination, but because his imagination was not his predominant talent, because he indulged it not, and because he gave not so many proofs of this talent as of the other. This turn of mind led him to admire French models; he studied Boileau attentively, formed himself upon him, as Milton formed himself upon the Grecian and Italian sons of Fancy. He stuck to describing modern manners; but those manners, because they are familiar, uniform, artificial, and polished, are in their very nature unfit for any lofty effort of the Muse. He gradually became one of the most correct, even, and exact poets that ever wrote, polishing his pieces with a care and assiduity that no business or avocation ever interrupted; so that if he does not frequently ravish and transport his reader, yet he does not disgust him with unexpected inequalities and absurd improprieties. Whatever poetical enthusiasm he actually possessed, he withheld and stifled. The perusal of him affects not our minds with such strong emotions as we feel from Homer and Milton, so that no man of a true poetical spirit is master of himself while he reads them. Hence he is a writer fit for universal perusal, adapted to all ages and stations, for the old and for the young, the man of business and the scholar. He who would think the Fairy Queen, |