2Q2 POPE. 



sible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it 

 saps the very foundation of character. There seems to have 

 been an universal scepticism, and in its worst form, that is, with 

 an outward conformity in the interest of decorum and order. 

 There was an unbelief that did not believe even in itself. 



The difference between the leading minds of the former age 

 and that which was supplanting it went to the very roots of the 

 soul. Milton was willing to peril the success of his crowning 

 work by making the poetry of it a stalking-horse for his theo 

 logical convictions. What was that Fame, 



Which the clear spirit doth raise 

 To scorn delights and live laborious days, 



to the crown of a good preacher who sets 



The hearts of men on fire 

 To scorn the sordid world and unto heaven aspire ? 



Dean Swift, who aspired to the mitre, could write a book whose 

 moral, if it had any, was that one religion was as good as another, 

 since all were political devices, and accepted a cure of souls 

 when it was more than doubtful whether he believed that his 

 fellow-creatures had any souls to be saved, or, if they had, whether 

 they were worth saving. The answer which Pulci s Margutte 

 makes to Morgante, when he asked if he believed in Christ or 

 Mahomet, would have expressed well enough the creed of the 

 majority of that generation: 



To tell thee truly, 



My faith in black s no greater than in azure, 

 But I believe in capons, roast-meat, bouilli, 

 And in good wine my faith s beyond all measure.* 



It was a carnival of intellect without faith, when men could be 

 Protestant or Catholic, both at once, or by turns, or neither, as 

 suited their interest, when they could swear one allegiance and 

 keep on safe terms with the other, when prime ministers and 

 commanders-in-chief could be intelligencers of the Pretender, 

 nay, when even Algernon Sidney himself could be a pensioner 

 of France. What morality there was, was the morality of appear 

 ances, of the side that is turned toward men and not toward 

 God. The very shamelessness of Congreve is refreshing in that 

 age of sham. 



It was impossible that anything truly great, that is, great on 

 the moral and emotional as well as the intellectual side, should 

 be produced by such a generation. But something intellectually 

 great could be and was. The French mind, always stronger in 

 perceptive and analytic than in imaginative qualities, loving 



* Morgante xviii. 115. 



