POPE, 285 



The age to quit their clogs 

 t&amp;gt;y the known rules of virtuous liberty. 



Nor was it wholly confined to England. Symptoms of a similar 

 reaction began to shoAV themselves on the Continent, notably in 

 the translation of Milton (1732) and the publication of the 

 Nibelungen Lied (1757) by Bodmer, and the imitations of 

 Thomson in France. Was it possible, then, that there was 

 anything better than good sense, elegant diction, and the highest 

 polish of style ? Could there be an intellectual appetite which 

 antithesis failed to satisfy? If the horse would only have faith 

 enough in his green spectacles, surely the straw would acquire, 

 not only the flavour, but the nutritious properties of fresh grass. 

 The horse was foolish enough to starve, but the public is wiser. 

 It is surprising how patiently it will go on, for generation after 

 generation, transmuting dry stubble into verdure in this fashion. 

 The school which Boileau founded was critical and not 

 creative. It was limited, not only in its essence, but by the 

 capabilities of the French language and by the natural bent of 

 the French mind, which finds a predominant satisfaction in 

 phrases if elegantly turned, and can make a despotism, political 

 or aesthetic, palatable with the pepper of epigram. The style of 

 Louis XIV. did what his armies failed to do. It overran and 

 subjugated Europe. It struck the literature of imagination with 

 palsy, and it is droll enough to see Voltaire, after he had got 

 some knowledge of Shakspeare, continually endeavouring to 

 reassure himself about the poetry of the grand siecle, and all the 

 time asking himself, Why, in the name of all the gods at once, 

 is this not the real thing? He seems to have felt that there 

 was a dreadful mistake somewhere, when poetry must be called 

 upon to prove itself inspired, above all when it must demon 

 strate that it is interesting, all appearances to the contrary 

 notwithstanding. Difficulty, according to Voltaire, is the tenth 

 Muse ; but how if there were difficulty in reading as well as 

 writing ? It was something, at any rate, which an increasing 

 number of persons were perverse enough to feel in attempting 

 the productions of a pseudo-classicism, the classicism of red 

 heels and periwigs. Even poor old Dennis himself had arrived 

 at a kind of muddled notion that artifice was not precisely art, 

 that there were depths in human nature which the most per 

 fectly manufactured line of five feet could not sound, and 

 passionate elations that could not be tuned to the lullaby seesaw 

 of the couplet. The satisfactions of a conventional taste were 

 very well in their own way, but were they, after all, the highest 



