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From The Cornhill Magazine.
POPE AS A MORALIST.

descending, we may generally assume that the rat has still some life in him.

Pope, moreover, has received testimonies of a less equivocal kind. Byron called him, with characteristic vehemence, the " "great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of

THE extraordinary vitality of Pope's writings is a remarkable phenomenon in its way. Few reputations have been exposed to such perils at the hands of open enemies or of imprudent friends. In his lifetime "the wasp of Twickenham "all stages of existence;" though it is not could sting through a sevenfold covering less characteristic that Byron was at the of pride or stupidity. Lady Mary and same time helping to dethrone the idol Lord Hervey writhed and retaliated with before which he prostrated himself. Ste.little more success than the poor deni- Beuve, again, has thrown the shield of zens of Grub Street. But it is more re- his unrivalled critical authority over Pope markable that Pope seems to be stinging when attacked by M. Taine; and a critic, well into the second century after his who may sometimes be overstrained in death. His writings resemble those fire- his language, but who never speaks as a works which, after they have fallen to critic without showing the keenest inthe ground and been apparently quenched, sight, has more recently spoken of Pope suddenly break out again into sputtering in terms which recall Byron's enthusiexplosions. The waters of a literary asm. "Pope," says Mr. Ruskin, in one revolution have passed over him without of his Oxford lectures, "is the most putting him out. Though much of his perfect representative we have, since poetry has ceased to interest us, so many Chaucer, of the true English mind;" and of his brilliant couplets still survive that he adds that his hearers will find, as they probably no dead writer, with the solitary study Pope, that he has expressed for exception of Shakespeare, is more fre- them, "in the strictest language and quently quoted at the present day. It is within the briefest limits, every law of in vain that he is abused, ridiculed, and art, of criticism, of economy, of policy, even declared to be no poet at all. The and finally of a benevolence, humble, raschool of Wordsworth regarded him as tional, and resigned, contented with its the embodiment of the corrupting influ- allotted share of life, and trusting the ence in English poetry; more recently problem of its salvation to Him in whose M. Taine has attacked him, chiefly, as it hand lies that of the universe." These would seem, for daring to run counter to remarks are added by way of illustrating M. Taine's theories; and, hardest fate of the relation of art to morals, and enforall, the learned editor who is now bring- cing the great principle that a noble style ing out a conclusive edition of his writ- can only proceed from a sincere heart. ings has had his nerves so hardened by" You can only learn to speak as these familiarity with poor Pope's many in- men spoke by learning what these men iquities, that his notes are one prolonged were." When we ask impartially what attack on his author's morality, ortho- Pope was, we may possibly be inclined doxy, and even poetical power. We seem to doubt the complete soundness of the to be listening to a Boswell animated by eulogy upon his teaching. Meanwhile, the soul of a Dennis. And yet Pope sur- however, Byron and Mr. Ruskin agree in vives, as indeed the bitterness of his as- holding up Pope as an instance, almost sailants testifies. When controversial- as the typical instance, of that kind of ists spend volumes in confuting an adver-poetry which is directly intended to ensary who has been for centuries in his force a lofty morality. To possess such grave, their unconscious testimony to his vitality is generally of more significance than their demonstration that he ought to be insignificant. Drowning a dead rat is too dismal an occupation to be long pursued; and whilst we watch the stream

a charm for two great writers, who, however different in all other respects, strikingly agree in this, that their opinions are singularly independent of conventional judgments, is some proof that Pope possessed great merits as a poetical in

terpreter of morals. Without venturing | cate fancy still, even when employed into the wider ocean of poetical criticism, about the paraphernalia of modern life; I will endeavour in this article to inquire a truth which Byron maintained, though what was the specific element in Pope's not in an unimpeachable form, in his conpoetry which explains, if it does not jus-troversy with Bowles. We sometimes tify, this enthusiastic praise.

talk as if our ancestors were nothing but I shall venture to assume, indeed, that hoops and wigs; and forget that human Pope was a genuine poet. Nor do I un- passions exist even under the most comderstand how any one who has really plex structures of starch and buckram. studied his writings can deny to him that And consequently we are very apt to title, unless by help of a singularly nar- make a false estimate of the precise row definition of its meaning. It is suf-nature of that change which fairly entitles ficient to name the Rape of the Lock, us to call Pope's age prosaic. In showerwhich is allowed, even by his bitteresting down our epithets of artificial, scepticritics, to be a masterpiece of delicate cal, and utilitarian, we not seldom forget fancy. Pope's sylphs, as Mr. Elwin says, what kind of figure we are ourselves likeare legitimate descendants from Shake- ly to make in the eyes of our own descendspeare's fairies. True, they have entered ants. into rather humiliating bondage. Shakespeare's Ariel has to fetch the midnight dew from the still vexed Bermoothes; he delights to fly

To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curl'd clouds,

whereas the "humbler province" of
Pope's Ariel is "to tend the fair"
To steal from rainbows, ere they drop

showers,

A brighter wash; to curl their waving hairs,
Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs.
Nay, oft in dreams invention we bestow
To change a flounce or add a furbelow.

Prospero, threatening Ariel for muring, says, "I will

in

Whatever be the position rightly to be assigned to Pope in the British Walhalla, his own theory has been unmistakably expressed. He boasts

That not in fancy's maze he wandered long,
But stooped to truth and moralized his song.
His theory is compressed into one of the
innumerable aphorisms which have to
some degree lost their original sharpness
of definition, because they have passed,
as current coinage, through so many
hands.

The proper study of mankind is man.
The saying is in form about identical
mur-with Goethe's remark that man is proper-
ly the only object which interests man.
The two poets, indeed, understood the
doctrine in a very different way. Pope's
interpretation was narrow and mechan-
ical. He would place such limitations
upon the sphere of human interest as to
exclude, perhaps, the greatest part of
what we generally mean by poetry. How
much, for example, would have to be
suppressed if we sympathized with Pope's

condemnation of the works in which

rend an oak And peg thee in his knotty entrails, until Thou hast howled away twelve winters. The fate threatened to a disobedient sprite in his later poem is that he shall Be stuff'd in vials, or transfixed with pins, Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie, Or wedged whole ages in a bodkin's eye. Scriblerus, were that excellent critic still alive, might convert the poem into an allegory. Pope's muse Pure description holds the place of sense. one may use the old-fashioned word in such a connec- A large proportion of such poets as tion - had left the free forest for Will's Thomson and Cowper would disappear, Coffee-house, and haunted ladies' bou- Wordsworth's pages would show fearful doirs instead of the brakes of the en- gaps, and Keats would be in risk of sumchanted island. Her wings were clogged mary suppression. We may doubt with "gums and pomatums," and her "thin essence "had shrunk "like a rivel'd flower." But a delicate fancy is a deli

whether much would be left of Spenser, from whom both Keats and Pope, like so many other of our poets, drew inspiration

late the imagination. And, therefore, he inevitably interests himself chiefly in what is certainly a perennial source of interest

and women immediately related to himself; and it may be remarked, in passing, that if this narrows the range of Pope's poetry, the error is not so vital as a modern delusion of the opposite kind. Because poetry should not be brought into too close a contact with the prose of daily life, we sometimes seem to think that it must have no relation to daily life at all, and consequently convert it into a mere luxurious dreaming, where the beautiful very speedily degenerates into the pretty or the picturesque. Because poetry need not be always a pointblank fire of moral platitudes, we occasionally declare that there is no connection at all between poetry and morality, and that all art is good which is for the moment agreeable. Such theories must end in reducing all poetry and art to be at best more or less elegant trifling for the amusement of the indolent: and to those who uphold them, Pope's example may be of some use. If he went too far in the direction of identifying poetry with preaching, he was not wrong in assuming that poetry should involve preaching, though by an indirect method. Morality and art are not independent, though not identical; for both, as Mr. Ruskin shows in the passage just quoted, are only admirable when the expression of healthful and noble natures.

in their youth. Fairyland would be deserted, and the poet condemned to working upon ordinary commonplaces in broad daylight. The principle which - the passions and thoughts of the men Pope proclaimed is susceptible of the inverse application. Poetry, it really proves, may rightly concern itself with inanimate nature, with pure description, or with the presentation of lovely symbols not definitely identified with any cut and dried saws of moral wisdom; because there is no part of the visible universe to which we have not some relation, and the most etherial dreams that ever visited a youthful poet "on summer eve by haunted stream" are in some sense reflections of the passions and interests that surround our daily life. Pope, however, as the man more fitted than any other fully to interpret the mind of his own age, inevitably gives a different construction to a very sound maxim. He rightly assumes that man is his proper study; but then by man he means not the genus, but a narrow species of the human being. "Man means Bolingbroke, and Walpole, and Swift, and Curll, and Theobald; it does not mean man as the product of a long series of generations and part of the great universe of inextricably involved forces. He cannot understand the man of distant ages; Homer is to him not the spontaneous voice of a ruder age, but a clever artist, whose gods and heroes are consciously-constructed parts of an artificial "machinery." Nature has, for him, ceased to be inhabited by sylphs and Taking Pope's view of his poetical offairies, except to amuse the fancies of fine fice, there remain considerable difficulties ladies and gentleman, and has not yet re- in estimating the value of the lesson which ceived a new interest from the fairy tales he taught with so much energy. The of science. The old ideal of chivalry difficulties result both from that element merely suggests the sneers of Cervantes, which was common to his contemporaor even the buffoonery of Butler's wit, ries and from that which was supplied by and has not undergone restoration at the Pope's own idiosyncrasies. The comhands of modern romanticists. Politics monplaces in which Pope takes such inare not associated in his mind with any finite delight have become very stale for great social upheaval, but with a series us. Assuming their perfect sincerity, we of petty squabbles for places and pen- cannot understand how anybody should sions, in which bribery is the great mov- have thought of enforcing them with ing force. What he means by religion such amazing emphasis. We constantly often seems to be less the recognition of a feel a shock like that which surprises the divine element in the world than a series of reader of Young's Night Thoughts when bare metaphysical demonstrations too he finds it asserted, in all the pomp of frigid to produce enthusiasm or to stimu-! blank verse, that