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

ENGLISH POE TR Y I. THE EIGHTEENTH CE7NTU' Y 37
any books he got his views and sentiments from the conversation of the men whom he met in society or who gathered round
him in his Twickenham Villa. The organ which he used and
which his age appreciated was common-sense, not of the dull
kind that deals in platitudes, but bright, clear sense which turns
platitudes into sparkling epigrams. For this another synonyme
is wit; sometimes it is varied by the term nature. Wit, sense,
nature, these confirmed by the classical authority of Homer,
Virgil, and the Stagirite, formed the tribunal before which all
things were tried. Pope himself defines it thus:
"True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."
In the words of Mr. Leslie Stephen, "The dominant figure in
Pope's day was the wit. The wit, taken personally, was the
man who represented what we now describe by culture or the
spirit of the age. Bright, clear common-sense was for once having its own way and tyrannizing over the faculties from which
it too often suffers violence.'The favored faculty never doubted
its own qualification for supremacy in every department'-in
metaphysics, in politics, in religion, and also in poetry. Pope
writes for the wits, and for these in their ordinary moods. He
aims at giving us the refined and doubly distilled essence of the
conversation of the statesmen and courtiers of his time. His
standard of good writing was the fitness of his poetry to pass
muster when shown by Gay to his Duchess, or read after dinner
to a party composed of Swift, Bolingbroke, and Congreve. That
imaginary audience is always looking-over his shoulder, applauding a good hit, chuckling over allusions to the last bit of scandal, and ridiculing any extravagance tending to romance or
sentimentalism."
Those who have little admiration for these men and their
ways, and who seek in poetry for other thoughts and feelings
than they cared for, cannot take more than a passing interest in
most things that Pope has written But for students of that
age and of social manners generally no poet of our country supplies a larger fund of illustrations. Hear the self-complacent
pride with which he describes his Twickenham gatherings: