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

ENGLISH POETRY IN THE EIGHTEENVTH CENTURY. 41
But it is in his Satires or Imitations of Horace that Pope's
highest faculty is seen. As long as he keeps to the general,
describing classes of men without individualizing, we can more
or less enjoy or even laugh at his pungent wit. As in the wellknown passage beginning
"Is there a parson much bemused with beer,
A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer."
The satirical portraits which he draws are no doubt as bitterly incisive as anything in our language; they cut to the quick.
But cleverness and wit doing the work of malice is no pleasant
spectacle. The famous lines on Addison are stabs with a poisoned
rapier. In the satire on Lord Hervey, under the name of Sporus, which occurs in the same epistle to Arbuthnot, rancor quite
outdoes itself. We turn away from the perusal more pained by
the venom than pleased by the skill of the performer.
On the whole it will be clear that we cannot rank highly
Pope's contribution either to the imaginative feeling or to the
substantive thought of the world. It was not as a thinker, or
in any sense as an inspired seer, but as an artist, a stylist, as it
is sometimes called, that he still holds his place among poets.
There is not another instance in English poetry of one who
owes so much to his power of coining phrases and manipulating
maxims. Whence did he learn it? The style in which he wrote
he did not himself create; he received it from Dryden, its originator, and carried it on to the highest perfection of which it was
capable. Here is his own view of the matter:
"We conquered France, but felt our captive's charms;
Her arts victorious triumphed o'er our arms;
Britain to soft refinements less a foe,
Wit grew polite and numbers learned to flow.
Wailer was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine.
Tho still some traces of our rustic vein,
And splay-foot verse, remained, and will remain.
Late, very late, correctness grew our care,
When the tired nation breathed from civil war.
Exact Racine, and Corneille's noble fire,
Showed us that France had something to admire.