harmony of Pope and Dryden in comparison, for there is not a living
poet (except Rogers, Gifford, Campbell, and Crabbe) who can write
an heroic couplet. The fact is, that the exquisite beauty of their
versification has withdrawn the public attention from their other
excellences, as the vulgar eye will rest more upon the splendour of
the uniform than the quality of the troops. It is this very
harmony, particularly in Pope, which has raised the vulgar and
atrocious cant against him:--because his versification is perfect,
it is assumed that it is his only perfection; because his truths
are so clear, it is asserted that he has no invention; and because
he is always intelligible, it is taken for granted that he has no
genius. We are sneeringly told that he is the 'Poet of Reason,' as
if this was a reason for his being no poet. Taking passage for
passage, I will undertake to cite more lines teeming with
_imagination_ from Pope than from any two living poets, be they who
they may. To take an instance at random from a species of
composition not very favourable to imagination--Satire: set down
the character of Sporus, with all the wonderful play of fancy which
is scattered over it, and place by its side an equal number of
verses, from any two existing poets, of the same power and the same
variety--where will you find them?

"I merely mention one instance of many in reply to the injustice
done to the memory of him who harmonised our poetical language. The
attorneys clerks, and other self-educated genii, found it easier to
distort themselves to the new models than to toil after the
symmetry of him who had enchanted their fathers. They were besides
smitten by being told that the new school were to revive the
language of Queen Elizabeth, the true English; as every body in the
reign of Queen Anne wrote no better than French, by a species of