2 The ancients, according to Pope, had a moral as well as an intellectual superiority. Of old the poets "who but endeavoured well," were praised by their brethren. Now those who reached the heights of Parnassus "employed their pains in spurning down others." Of old again the professional critic was generous and fanned the poet's fire." Now critics hated the poet, and all the more that they had learned from him the art of criticism.1 A freedom from jealousy, a liberality of eulogy were universal with pagans; malice and envy reigned supreme in christendom. Upon this false pretext Pope had the luxury of indulging in the vice he reprobated. He preached up good-nature," ," he would suffer no leaven of "spleen and sour disdain," and his Essay throughout is a diatribe against English critics. The entire crew were spiteful blockheads without sense or principle. The excessive rancour points to some personal offence, and it is probable that his estimate of critics was regulated by their low opinion of his Pastorals, which was the chief work he had hitherto published. When he speaks of poets he keeps no better to the leniency he advocates. He would "sometimes have censure restrained, and would charitably let the dull be vain," upon the uncharitable allegation that the more they were corrected the worse they grew. He engrafts upon his recommendation of a "charitable silence," an invective against the inferior versifiers who, in their old age, have not discovered that they are superannuated. For this inability to detect the decay of their faculties he calls them "shameless bards, impenitently bold." 3 No error of judgment had a stronger claim to be treated with tenderness, and the bitterness of the passage was the less excusable that it was certainly directed against his former friend Wycherley. There are other contradictions in the Essay, and several of the minor positions are glaringly erroneous. Dennis was within the truth when he said of the whole that it was very superficial." There remains the question whether the poem is remarkable for the beauty of expression signalised by Addison and Hazlitt. Pope intended his work to be a combination of highly wrought passages, and of that more easy style described by Dryden, when he says— And this unpolished, rugged verse I chose, The parts of the Essay which are pitched in the highest key, are far the best, and where Pope borrowed the imagery, as in the simile of the traveller ascending the Alps, the lines owe their splendour to his improvements. The similes designed to be witty are less happy. 1 Ver. 511, 514, 100, 629-644, 107. 3 Ver. 596-610. 4 Religio Laici, ness. One or two only are good; the rest have little point or appropriatəAnxious to string together as many smart comparisons as possible, Pope was careless of consistency. Speaking of the futility of abusing paltry versifiers, he says, Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep, As, after stumbling, jades will mend their pace.1 In The meaning of the first couplet seems to be that bad poets become callous by castigation, and indifferent to censure; the meaning of the second that failure stimulated them to improvement. the first couplet they proceed from drowsiness to slumber; in the second their false steps stir them up to mend their pace. They are first represented as proceeding from bad to worse, and then from bad to better. The attempt in the Essay to turn common prose into rhyme is only partially successful. Dryden and Byron, the greatest masters in different ways of the familiar style, pour out words in their natural order with a marvellous vigour and facility. The merit is in this unforced idiomatic flow of the language, unimpeded by the shackles of rhymes. Almost anybody may convert ordinary prose into defective verse, and much of the verse in the Essay on Criticism is of a low order. The phraseology is frequently mean and slovenly, the construction inverted and ungrammatical, the ellipses harsh, the expletives feeble, the metre inharmonious, the rhymes imperfect. Striving to be poetical, Pope fell below bald and slip-shod prose. lie thick, and a couple of specimens will be enough : But when t'examine ev'ry part he came. Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do. Examples The transposition of the verb for the sake of the rhyme was the rule with Pope. He habitually succumbed to the difficulty of preserving the legitimate arrangement of words; yet it is an anomaly in literature that with his powers and patient industry he could tolerate such despicable examples of the licence, and this in enunciating hacknied precepts, only to be raised above insipidity by the perfection with which they were moulded into verse. Where the plain portions of the poem are not positively bad, they are seldom of any peculiar excellence. Mediocrity, relieved by occasional wellwrought passages, forms the staple of the work, and Hazlitt must surely have given loose to one of his wilful paradoxes when he contended that the general characteristics of the Essay were originality, thought, strength, terseness, wit, felicitous expression, and brilliant illustration. 1 Ver. 600-603. In its metrical qualities the Essay on Criticism is the worst of Pope's poems. One blemish is a want of variety in his final words. "There are," says Hazlitt, "no less than half a score couplets rhyming to sense. This appears almost incredible without giving the instances, and no less so when they are given." But of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.-lines 3, 4. In search of wit, these lose their common sense, And then turn critics in their own defence.-1. 28, 29. Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, And fills up all the mighty void of sense.-1. 209, 10. Some by old words to fame have made pretence, Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense.-1. 324, 5. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense.-1. 364, 5. At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence, That always shows great pride, or little sense.-1. 386, 7. Be silent always when you doubt your sense; And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence.-1. 566, 7. Be niggards of advice on no pretence: For the worst avarice is that of sense.-1. 578, 9. Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense, Horace still charms with graceful negligence, And without method talks us into sense.-1. 653, 4. The corresponding word which forms the rhyme is not always varied. "Offence" is used three times, and "defence" and pretence" are each employed twice. Hazlitt might have remarked, that wit was even more favoured than sense, and was used with greater laxity. A wit, in the reign of Queen Anne was not only a jester, but any author of distinction ; and wit, besides its special signification, was still sometimes employed as synonymous with mind. The ordinary generic and specific meanings, already confusing and fruitful in ambiguities, were not sufficient for Pope. A wit with him was now a jester, now an author, now a poet, and now, again, was contradistinguished from poets. Wit was the intellect, the judgment, the antithesis to judgment, a joke, and poetry. The word does duty, with a perplexing want of precision, throughout the essay, and furnishes a dozen rhymes alone : Nature to all things fixed the limits fit, And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.-lines 52, 3. One science only will one genius fit; So vast is art, so narrow human wit.-1. 60, 1. A perfect judge will read each work of wit Nor lose for that malignant dull delight, The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit.--1. 237, 8. As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit, Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit; As shades more sweetly recommend the light, So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.-1. 301, 2. So schismatics the plain believers quit, And are but damned for having too much wit.-1. 428, 9. Oft, leaving what is natural and fit, The current folly proves the ready wit.—1. 448, 9. Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ : Nay, wits had pensions, and young lords had wit.—1. 538, 9. Received his laws; and stood convinced 'twas fit, Who conquered nature, should preside o'er wit.-1. 651, 2. He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit, Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ.-1. 657, 8. In these twelve instances "wit" rhymes five times to fit," and three times to "writ." The monotony extends much farther. "Art," in the singular or plural, terminates eight lines, and in every case rhymes to "part," "parts," or "imparts." Imperfect rhymes abound. The examples which follow occur in the order in which they are set down. "None, own-showed, trod proved, beloved-steer, character-esteem, them-full, rule-take, track-rise, precipice-thoughts, faults-joined, mankind-delight, wit-appear, regular-caprice, nice-light, wit-good, blood-glass, place-sun, upon-still, suitable-ear, repair-join, line-line, joinJove, love-own, town-fault, thought-worn, turn-safe, laugh— lost, boast-boast, lost (bis)—join, divine—prove, love-ease, increase -care, war-join, shine-disapproved, beloved-take, speak-fool, dull satires, dedicators - read, head — speaks, makes — extreme, phlegm-find, joined-joined, mind-revive, live-chased, passedgood, blood-desert, heart-receive, give." In numerous instances, "the weight of the rhyme," as Johnson expresses it, when speaking of Denham, " is laid upon a word too feeble to sustain it." Some positive, persisting fops we know, We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow, Several lines are not metrical unless pronounced with a wrong emphasis, as False eloquence like the prismatic glass, which only ceases to be prose when "the," and the last syllable of "cloquence," are accentuated, and it is then no longer English. Examples like Atones not for that envy which it brings; are not much better. Many of the verses, and this last is a specimen, offend the ear by the succession of "low" and "creeping words." Pope belonged to the class of kings he mentions in his poem, who freely dispensed with the laws they had made. Johnson, commenting on Pope's attempt to adapt the sound to the sense, thinks it a contradiction, that he employed an Alexandrine to describe the swiftness of Camilla, and thirty years afterwards used the same measure to denote "the march of slow-paced majesty." There was no need to look for an instance at the interval of thirty years. It would have been found at an interval of half thirty lines in the Essay on Criticism, where an Alexandrine is introduced to portray the dragging progress of the wounded snake. The juxtaposition was doubtless deliberate for the purpose of illustrating the opposite movements of sluggishness and celerity. Johnson misunderstood the theory. The Alexandrine was not supposed to represent speed, but space. Thus when Pope describes the wound of Menelaus, in his translation of the Iliad, he says in a note, "Homer is very particular here in giving the picture of the blood running in a long trace, lower and lower. The author's design being only to image the streaming of the blood, it seemed equivalent to make it trickle through the length of an Alexandrine line." As down thy snowy thigh distilled the streaming flood. A long line being presumed to suggest the motion of a long distance, the retarded or accelerated motion was intended to be expressed by the slow or rapid syllables of which the line was composed. The end was not answered, because, as Johnson remarks, the break in the middle of the Alexandrine is antagonistic to haste, and he has equally shown that Pope was not happy in the application of his mistaken rule. The slow march outstrips the swift Camilla, who is even left behind by the wounded snake in the first half of the line. Had the examples been a complete illustration of the theory, the gain would have been nothing. Representative metre, in the strict sense of the term, though sanctioned by eminent names, would degrade |