which had formed the chief characteristics of England's best bards, and
were slow to rank the author of "Eloisa and Abelard," with the creator
of "Hamlet," "Othello," and "Lear;" the author of the "Rape of the Lock"
with the author of "Paradise Lost;" the author of the "Pastorals," with
the author of the "Faery Queen;" and the author of the "Imitations of
Horace," with the author of the "Canterbury Tales." On the one hand,
Pope's ardent friends erred in classing him with or above these great
old writers; and on the other, his enemies were thus provoked to thrust
him too far down in the scale, and to deny him genius altogether. Since
his death, his fame has continued to vibrate between extremes. Lord
Byron and Lord Carlisle (the latter, in a lecture delivered in Leeds in
December 1850, and published afterwards) have placed him ridiculously
high; while Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Bowles, have underrated him. It
shall be our endeavour, in our succeeding remarks, to steer a middle
course between the parties.

Lord Carlisle commenced his able and eloquent prelection by deploring
the fact, that Pope had sunk in estimation. And yet, a few sentences
after, he told us that the "Commissioners of the Fine Arts" selected
Pope, along with Chaucer, Shakspeare, Spenser, Milton, and Dryden, to
fill the six vacant places in the New Palace of Westminster. This does
not substantiate the assertion, that Pope has sunk in estimation. Had he
sunk to any great extent, the Commissioners would not have dared to put
his name and statue beside those of the acknowledged masters of English
poetry. But apart from this, we do think that Lord Carlisle has
exaggerated the "Decline and Fall" of the empire of Pope. He is still,
with the exception, perhaps, of Cowper, the most popular poet of the
eighteenth century. His "Essay on Man," and his "Eloisa and Abelard,"
are probably in every good library, public and private, in Great
Britain. Can we say as much of Chaucer and Spenser? Passages and lines