Neither has anything of the easy elegance, the simple natural grace, the most exquisite artifice simulating the absence of all art, of Horace; but the care, and dexterity, and superior refinement of Pope, his neatness, and concentration, and point, supply a better substitute for these charms than the ruder strength, and more turbulent passion, of Dryden. If Dryden, too, has more natural fire and force, and rises in his greater passages to a stormy grandeur to which the other does not venture to commit himself, Pope in some degree compensates for that by a dignity, a quiet, sometimes pathetic, majesty, which we find nowhere in Dryden's poetry. Dryden has translated the Æneid, and Pope the Iliad; but the two tasks would apparently have been better distributed if Dryden had chanced to have taken up Homer, and left Virgil to Pope. Pope's Iliad, in truth, whatever may be its merits of another kind, is, in spirit and style, about the most unhomeric performance in the whole compass of our poetry, as Pope had, of all our great poets, the most unhomeric genius. He was emphatically the poet of the highly artificial age in which he lived; and his excellence lay in, or at least was fostered and perfected by, the accordance of all his tastes and talents, of his whole moral and intellectual constitution, with the spirit of that condition of things. Not touches of natural emotion, but the titillation of wit and fancy,-not tones of natural music, but the tone of good society,-make up the charm of his poetry; the polish, pungency, and brilliance of which, however, in its most happily executed passages leave nothing in that style to be desired. Pope, no doubt, wrote with a care and elaboration that were unknown to Dryden; against whom, indeed, it is a reproach made by his pupil, that, copious as he was, he wanted or forgot The last and greatest art-the art to blot. be And so perhaps, although the expression is a strong and a startling one, may the said art, not without some reason, called in reference to the particular species of poetry which Dryden and Pope cultivated, dependent as that is for its success in pleasing us almost as much upon the absence of faults as upon the presence of beauties. Such partial obscuration or distortion of the imagery as we excuse, or even admire, in the expanded mirror of a lake reflecting the woods and hills and overhanging sky, when its waters are ruffled or swayed by the fitful breeze, would be intolerable in a looking glass, were it otherwise the most splendid article of the sort that upholstery every furnished. We shall not occupy much of our space with quotations from a writer whose works are so universally known, and may be supposed to be in the hands of most of our readers; but those most familiar with Pope's poetry will not object to having placed before them a single extract from each of two of his most perfect productions, in different styles, while, if there should be any to whom he is known chiefly by his fame, they may be induced, perhaps, by these short specimens to seek further acquaintance with what he has written. Here is one of the descriptions, full of life and light, from the Rape of the Lock :-- But now secure the painted vessel glides, The sunbeams trembling on the floating tides; All but the Sylph; with careful thoughts oppressed, Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes, Where every beam new transient colours flings, Colours that change whene'er they wave their wings. Superior by the head, was Ariel placed; His purple pinions opening to the sun, He raised his azure wand, and thus begun : "Ye Sylphs and Sylphids, to your chief give ear; Fays, Fairies, Genii, Elves, and Demons hear: Ye know the spheres and various tasks assigned Some in the fields of purest ether play, And bask and whiten in the blaze of day; Some guide the course of wandering orbs on high, To draw fresh colours from the vernal flowers; Nay, oft in dreams invention we bestow, To change a flounce, or add a furbelow. "This day black omens threat the brightest fair That e'er deserved a watchful spirit's care; Some dire disaster, or by force or slight, But what, or where, the Fates have wrapped in night. Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law, Or some frail China jar receive a flaw; Or stain her honour, or her new brocade, Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade ; Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball, Or whether heaven has doomed that Shock must fall. "Whatever spirit, careless of his charge, Or wedged whole ages in a bodkin's eye: Or alum styptics, with contracting power, He spoke; the spirits from the sails descend; Not less spirited or less highly finished, in a severer or grander manner, is the noble conclusion of the Dunciad :- "Oh," cried the goddess,' for some pedant reign! O! if my sons may learn one earthly thing, That which my priests, and mine alone, maintain, Prompt at the call, around the goddess roll Nor wert thou, Isis, wanting to the day (Though Christ-Church long kept prudishly away). Each staunch polemic, stubborn as a rock, Each fierce logician, still expelling Locke, Came whip and spur, and dashed through thin and thick, On German Crouzaz and Dutch Burgersdyck. As many quit the streams that murmuring fall To lull the sons of Margaret and Clare-hall, 1 Dulness. His hat, which never vailed to human pride, 'Tis true, on words is still our whole debate, To give up Cicero to C or K. Let Freind affect to speak as Terence spoke, Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit: Are things which Kuster, Burman, Wasse shall see Walker! our hat"- -nor more he deigned to say, O musel relate (for you can tell alone; Wits have short memories, and dunces none); The venal quiet, and entrance the dull; Till drowned was sense, and shame, and right, and wrong; O sing, and hush the nations with thy song! |