come, if he has not come already, to a peculiarly defined and strictly
apportioned place on the shelf. He was unquestionably the poet of his
age. But his age was far from being one of a lofty order: it was a low,
languid, artificial, and lazily sceptical age. It loved to be tickled;
and Pope tickled it with the finger of a master. It liked to be lulled,
at other times, into half-slumber; and the soft and even monotonies of
Pope's pastorals and "Windsor Forest" effected this end. It loved to be
suspended in a state of semi-doubt, swung to and fro in agreeable
equipoise; and the "Essay on Man" was precisely such a swing. It was
fond of a mixture of strong English sense with French graces and charms
of manner; and Pope supplied it. It was fond of keen, yet artfully
managed satire; and Pope furnished it in abundance. It loved nothing
that threatened greatly to disturb its equanimity or over-much to excite
or arouse it; and there was little of this in Pope. Had he been a really
great poet of the old Homer or Dante breed, he would have outshot his
age, till he "dwindled in the distance;" but in lieu of immediate fame,
and of elaborate lectures in the next century, to bolster it unduly up,
all generations would have "risen and called him blessed."

We had intended some remarks on Pope as a prose-writer, and as a
correspondent; but want of space has compelled us to confine ourselves
to his poetry.




CONTENTS

MORAL ESSAYS--
Epistle I.--Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men