his real creed, and one or two other circumstances we do not choose to
name, combined to create a life-long ulcer in his heart and temper,
against which the vigour of his mind, the enthusiasm of his literary
tastes, and the warmth of his heart, struggled with much difficulty. He
had not, in short, the basis of a truly great poet, either in
imagination or in nature. Nor, with all his incredible industry, tact,
and talent, did he ever rise into the "seventh heaven of invention." A
splendid sylph let us call him--a "giant angel" he was not.

His culture, like his genius, was rather elegant than profound. He lived
in an age when a knowledge of the classics, with a tincture of the
metaphysics of the schools, was thought a good average stock of
learning, although it was the age, too, of such mighty scholars as
Bentley, Clarke, and Warlburton. Pope seems to have glanced over a great
variety of subjects with a rapid _recherce_ eye, not examined any one
with a quiet, deep, longing, lingering, exhaustive look. He was no
literary Behemoth, "trusting that he could draw up Jordan into his
mouth." He became thus neither an ill-informed writer, like Goldsmith,
whose ingenuity must make up for his ignorance, nor one of those
_doctorum vatum_, those learned poets, such as Dante, Milton, and
Coleridge, whose works alone, according at least to Buchanan, are to
obtain the rare and regal palm of immortality--

"_Sola doctorum_ monumenta vatum
Nesciunt fati imperium severi:
Sola contemnunt Phlegethonta, et Orci
Jura superbi."

That his philosophy was empirical, is proved by his "Essay on Man,"
which, notwithstanding all its brilliant rhetoric, is the shallow