MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 555 



Sharpe, the friend of Fox, Home Tooke, and Canning ; Lord Byron 

 has spoken of him as " a man of elegant mind, \vho had lived much 

 with the best." 



We have been disappointed with the perusal of these letters there 

 is no subtle reasoning or opinions that may be called original or 

 striking in them; but they are full of pleasing sentences and elegant 

 remarks, equally elegantly presented to us ; no word seems to have 

 been placed on the paper without consideration on the form of the 

 passage ; and with this pondering the volume has become full of 

 what may be designated tesselated pages, the word is weighed by 

 the weight of its predecessor, and the stone is cut so as to be uniform 

 with the piece before it. 



We will quote one or two passages which we have marked during 

 the perusal of this work : 



" I am inclined to think as you do of Dryden and Pope," Mr. Sharpe 

 writes to a young friend at College. " The former seldom seems to do his 

 very best ; the latter always. Of course the reader thinks Dryden above 

 his works, but not so as to Pope. Yet to be honest, let me ask who does 

 not read the latter's verses most frequently, and remember them better 

 too ? Indeed, we have them by heart." 



There is much truth in this sentence j but we read Dryden' s Mac- 

 Flecknoe, his Absalom and Achitophel, and his Epistles as often as 

 we do any pieces of Pope's. Dryden was by far the greatest genius, 

 and may be compared to an immense mass of ore, the ore in Pope 

 was at first smaller, but afterwards became refined. There was dross 

 in Dryden, but none in Pope. Pope is never off the earth, Dryden 

 frequently 



" Rides on the vollied lightnings through the Heavens :" 

 they are at the same time the most like and most unlike of poets. 



Johnson thus commences his imitation of the tenth satire of 

 Juvenal : 



" Let observation, with extensive view, 

 Survey mankind from China to Peru." 



Dryden and Pope would have been satisfied with the second line, 

 and would have avoided both the tautology and pomposity of the 

 first. Cowper has committed the same fault when he exclaims 



" Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness, 

 Some boundless contiguity of shade." 



He should have stopped at the end of the first line ; or, if he wished 

 to dwell on the intensity of the retirement, he should have rejected 

 the swollen word contiguity. Even " some boundless and impene- 

 trable shade" would have been better. p. 36. 



The above criticism is just with respect to Cowper, and we think 

 Mr. Sharpe' s amendment a great improvement ; but the criticism 

 does not wholly stand true in the passage from Johnson. Both 

 Dryden and Pope would have omitted the first line, especially Pope ; 

 for of all poets he is most free from superfluous words : but had the 

 doctor merely said, 



" Survev mankind from China to Peru/' 



