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

ENGLISH POE TRY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR Y. 39
The poems in which Pope's strength most eminently ap.
pears are his translation of the Iliad, the Essay on Man and
the Moral Essays, and lastly and chiefly his Satires or Imitations
of Horace. His Homer, which did more than any of his works
to fill his pocket and make his fame, has long since had its measure taken. Scholars have all endorsed Bailley's saying, " It is
a pretty poem, but it is not Homer." This is true. Yet those
who are fortunate enough to be neither scholars nor critics read
it still with real enjoyment, and prefer it to any of the numerous
translations that have since Pope's day been poured upon the
world.
Next to his Homer, the poem on which he bestowed most
labor is the Essay on Man, a philosophic poem intended to justify the ways of God to man. But the philosophy was not
native to Pope's own mind, did not originate from himself, but
consisted of views and arguments which Bolingbroke borrowed
from Leibnitz and supplied to Pope, and which he did into verse.
As might be expected in a poem so manufactured, the essay
is-not an organic whole, does not grow from any vital centre of
thought. It does not hang together as a mental growth from
within, but contains many inconsistencies pieced on from without. Deism, tho Pope repudiated it, and optimism make up its
staple and substance. Yet it is a deism which is in some places
interchanged with pantheism, as in the well-known and eloquent
passage beginning
"All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul."
The universality and immutability of the law of gravitation
and of other physical laws is eloquently expounded, and the
truth of the infinity of the universe and the insignificance of
this planet and of man amid the innumerable worlds which surround him is vividly conceived and pressed into the argument.
But in the presence of these facts there is no sense of the mystery and awe which they have awakened in more imaginative
and devout natures. A skilful piece of "mosaic work," as the
essay has been well named, can never have the impressiveness
which even an inferior philosophic poem might have when it
comes warm from the broodings of thie poet's own mind. Argu