time that he was dying, he began to live. He heard suddenly the call of
that buried and subconscious happiness which is in all of us, and which
may emerge suddenly at the sight of the grass of a meadow or the spears
of the enemy.




POPE AND THE ART OF SATIRE


The general critical theory common in this and the last century is
that it was very easy for the imitators of Pope to write English poetry.
The classical couplet was a thing that anyone could do. So far as that
goes, one may justifiably answer by asking anyone to try. It may be
easier really to have wit, than really, in the boldest and most enduring
sense, to have imagination. But it is immeasurably easier to pretend to
have imagination than to pretend to have wit. A man may indulge in a
sham rhapsody, because it may be the triumph of a rhapsody to be
unintelligible. But a man cannot indulge in a sham joke, because it is
the ruin of a joke to be unintelligible. A man may pretend to be a poet:
he can no more pretend to be a wit than he can pretend to bring rabbits
out of a hat without having learnt to be a conjuror. Therefore, it may
be submitted, there was a certain discipline in the old antithetical
couplet of Pope and his followers. If it did not permit of the great
liberty of wisdom used by the minority of great geniuses, neither did it
permit of the great liberty of folly which is used by the majority of
small writers. A prophet could not be a poet in those days, perhaps, but
at least a fool could not be a poet. If we take, for the sake of
example, such a line as Pope's: