version of a shallow system of naturalism. And one may accommodate to
him the well-known saying of Lyndhurst about Lord Brougham, "who would
have made a capital Chancellor if he had had only a little law;" so Pope
was very well qualified to have translated Homer, barring his ignorance
of Greek. But every page of his writings proves a wide and diversified
knowledge--a knowledge, too, which he has perfectly under control--which
he can make to go a great way--and by which, with admirable skill, he
can subserve alike his moral and literary purpose. But the question now
arises--What was his purpose? Was it worthy of his powers? Was it high,
holy, and faithfully pursued? No poet, we venture to say, can be great
without a great purpose. "Purpose is the edge and point of character; it
is the stamp and superscription of genius; it is the direction on the
letter of talent. Character without it is blunt and torpid; talent
without it is a letter which, undirected, goes nowhere; genius without
it is bullion, sluggish, splendid, and uncirculating." Now, Pope's
purpose seems, on the whole, dim and uncertain. He is indifferent to
destruction, and careless about conserving. He is neither an infidel nor
a Christian; no Whig, but no very ardent Tory either. He seems to wish
to support morality, but his support is stumbling and precarious;
although, on the other hand, notwithstanding his frequent coarseness of
language and looseness of allusion, he exhibits no desire to overturn or
undermine it. His bursts of moral feeling are very beautiful (such as
that containing the noble lines--

"Vice is undone if she forgets her earth,
And stoops from angels to the dregs of birth.
But 'tis the fall degrades her to a whore:
Let greatness own her and she's mean no more.
Her birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess,
Chaste matrons praise her, and grave bishops bless.