14 
His\‘sylphs and gnomes have: all. the 
verisnnilitnde »which poetry requires. 
The attributes belong to the beings, and 
the: beings to the world he has created; 
and their functions seem so necessary 
to the’ conduct ofthe story, that one 
wonders how. the action. could. ever 
have moved on without them. In short, 
though it is a nature (as it ought to be) 
of the poet’s own. creation, yet all is 
natural ; and the entire poem, with the 
exception only of a few filthy and licen- 
tious lines, is a perfect sample of the 
beau. idéal—the very perfeetion of the 
mock heroic: coherently fanciful and 
elegantly ludicrous ! 
: But though there are passages of high 
poetic beauty in his Hssay on Man, and 
some eyen that would be no unfit ac- 
companiments for the highest» descrip- 
tion of poetic composition, yet we look 
in vain through all his works for any 
evidence of a capability of soaring from 
the playful and elegant to the grand 
and sublime of imaginative creation: 
which, if it existed in him, must some- 
where cr other, one would think, have 
occasionally peeped forth. No where 
have we the semblance even of that 
grasp and comprehension of mind, which 
could have sustained the characters, or 
conceived and conducted the extended 
and important action of the epopee. 
: The Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard 
breathes also a strain of passion truly 
poetical: that is to say, passion, in its 
intensity, such as souls of the most 
exquisite sensibility alone can feel, and 
intellects of the highest capabilities of 
excitement can alone express. But it 
is passion only of one description— 
passion that is mingled with voluptuous 
feeling: and although this, in the par- 
ticular poem, is the very reverse of a 
defect, yet. it is the only. passion of 
which Pope has any where shewn him- 
self to be a master. When he would 
touch a string of more pure and simple 
pathos, and would awaken sympathy 
without inflaming desire (as. in. his 
Blegy on an unfortunate Young Lady), 
he comparatively fails; and in his im- 
potent. effort to rival. Dryden in -an 
““Qde for Music,” his Orpheus and 
Euridice do not even exact a sigh. In 
short, his genius: seems, to have been as 
little dramatie.as it wasiepic; and the 
reason, perhaps, after all, why he never 
commenced. his,long. meditated, and 
ofien:talked of Ieroic:Poem, was, that 
task. 
Rank of Pope as a Poet! 
he ‘felt himself incompetent to, the. 
[Auge 
- But ‘there are sthose who! haye, in ~ 
reality,; mo, tastereither , for the. lofty 
sublimity. of the, epic, or the geou 
and impassioned energy, of the. 
who © admire,(,or.. think, they, admi 
even Homer, only becanse they, have 
been taught in. their schools,and,col- 
leges that he is :admirable;)and,, be- 
cause it is a feather in their.caps, to 
appear to understand him :,.— who 
prefer the declamation, of Addison’s 
Cato to the native passion and thrilling 
emotions of the Macbeth, the; Othello, 
or the Lear of Shakspeare. By, such 
will Pope ever continue to be regarded 
as a poet of the very first order. , 
But whatever the Medwinean con- 
versations may have said for.him; of 
this description, most assuredly, was not 
Lord Byron, There was «no; water- 
eruel in his composition ; nor was the 
polish of art: dearer to him. than, the 
vigour of nature. Whatthen could it be 
that made him so hot a Pope-ite?—so 
hot, indeed, and so hasty, that he could 
not even look upon the opinion he 
controverted with discriminating. eyes, 
and see it ia its proper proportions. 
. The real question is not. whether 
images, derived from, artificial objects, 
and the habitudes and accommodations 
of an avtificial state of society, are 
totally unfit for poetry: but whether 
they were as fit for poetic theme.and 
illustration, or capable of , exciting as 
much poetic feeling, as natural. objects 
and phenomena, and the unsophisti- 
cated passions and humours of human 3 
beings, unshackled by. the. trammels 
and limits of etiquette, or untamed by 
the monotony of. civilization, ..Now, 
‘the negative of this. question isso. easily 
maintained, that the wonder) isjjit,ever 
should have been made.a question., We 
might add, that the whole life.and, writ-~ 
ings of Lord Byron himself furnish a 
sufficient practical ‘answer to his own 
position,’ How, \upon what, subjects, 
and: under what circumstances; did 
his poetic faculties develope‘ them- 
selves to that« brilliant sceneries 
they acquired ? Upon what wood 
they feed? Upon what subjects were 
they employed? By what habits)ivere | 
they fostered ? and with what aleserip- 
tion of images did he’ envbellish 
them? Were his heroes. and_his- he- 
roines selected from the groups of din- 
ner parties and drawing-rooms ?# Were 
i , sayy i! iovb Set 
“rfoeecr’ svonr oF wWiersqors 
roan sh 8 AM 
< f SBIAS*: 
n bes 193 
