English Poetry in the Eighteenth Century [pp. 30-50]

THE PRINCE TON RE VIEW.
in snatches, for its short episodes, its satirical portraits, and its
condensed maxims. At the same time the attempt must be
made to appraise it with fairness.
First, then, as to the matter or substance of Pope's poetry.
Let us remember that his was an unheroic age. It was not
stirred by great ideas, noble impulses, or profound emotions.
And if Pope did not find these in the atmosphere in which he
lived, he was not the man to put them there.
"The vision and the faculty divine"
this in its highest sense he never dreamt of. All that the greatest poets have taught us to look for-inspiration, keen insight,
a sense of the mystery of existence, lofty sentiment, high devotion, tender love, universal sympathy-these are not in him.
Even the warmth of natural affection, tho not wholly absent,
does not find in him its warmest expression. But he took the
world as he found it;, that educated society, thdt company of
men of letters which had made by themselves a little world of
their own, which, tho English in the warp and woof was
polished and refined by the varnish of French civilization.' He
wrote from a common-sense point of view for people who wished
for common-sense. The staple of his poetry was the manners,
habits, feelings, likes and dislikes of the town of his day, which
was to him the world) Probably no age and no phase of English society was ever so exactly reflected in contemporary poetry
as was the world in which he lived reflected in Pope's verse.
There it lies, all its lights and shadows, its ambitions, rivalries,
jealousies, its few objects of admiration, its many objects of contempt, imaged as in a faithful mirror. Subtle shades of thought,
the mysterious background that lies behind human life, about
these he did not trouble himself. He did not care to pierce
below the surface, but was content with the obvious and the
commonplace. But these he seized and expressed in lines and
phrases which by their keenness and vividness gave even to
things transitory a kind of immortality. Tho he was a wide
reader, he was not a deep student of any subject. "He skimmed
literature to pick up sentiments that could be verified, and to
learn attractive forms of composition." But more than from
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