POPE. 293 



precision, grace, and finesse, prone to attribute an almost 

 magical power to the scientific regulation whether of politics or 

 religion, had brought wit and fancy and the elegant arts of 

 society to as great perfection as was possible by the a priori 

 method. Its ideal in literature was to conjure passion within 

 the magic circle of courtliness, or to combine the appearance of 

 careless ease and gayety of thought with intellectual exactness 

 of statement. The eternal watchfulness of a wit that never slept 

 had made it distrustful of the natural emotions and the uncon 

 ventional expression of them, and its first question about a sen 

 timent was, Will it be safe ? about a phrase, Will it pass with the 

 Academy ? The effect of its example on English literature would 

 appear chiefly in neatness and facility of turn, in point and epi 

 grammatic compactness of phrase, and these in conveying con 

 ventional sentiments and emotions, in appealing to good society 

 rather than to human nature. Its influence would be greatest 

 where its success had been most marked, in what was called 

 moral poetry, whose chosen province was manners, and in 

 which satire, with its avenging scourge, took the place of that 

 profounder art whose office it was to purify, not the manners, 

 but the source of them in the soul, by pity and terror. The 

 mistake of the whole school of French criticism, it seems to me, 

 lay in its tendency to confound what was common with what 

 was vulgar, in a too exclusive deference to authority at the 

 expense of all free movement of the mind. 



There are certain defects of taste which correct themselves by 

 their own extravagance. Language, I suspect, is more apt to be 

 reformed by the charm of some master of it, like Milton, than 

 by any amount of precept. The influence of second-rate writers 

 for evil is at best ephemeral, for true style, the joint result of 

 culture and natural aptitude, is always in fashion, as fine 

 manners always are, in whatever clothes. Perhaps some reform 

 was needed when Quarles, who had no mean gift of poesy, 

 could write, 



My passion has no April in her eyes : 

 I cannot spend in mists ; I cannot mizzle ; 

 My fluent brains are too severe to drizzle 

 Slight drops.* 



* Elegie on Doctor Wilson. But if Quarles had been led astray by the vices of 

 Donne s manner, he had good company in Herbert and Vaughan. In common with 

 them, too, he had that luck of simpleness which is even more delightful than wit. In 

 the same poem he says, 



Go, glorious soul, and lay thy temples down 



In Abram s bosom, in the sacred down 



Of soft eternitv. 



