31 POPE. 



knew nothing of it, she had the meanest opinion of herself, and 

 like a fair taper, when she shined to all the room, yet round 

 about her station she had cast a shadow and a cloud, and she 

 shined to everybody but herself. This is poetry, though not in 

 verse. The plays of the elder dramatists are not without ex 

 amples of weak and vile women, but they are not without noble 

 ones either. Take these verses of Chapman, for example : 



Let_no man value at a little price 



A virtuous woman s counsel : her winged spirit 



Is feathered oftentimes with noble words 



And like her beauty, ravishing and pure ; 



The weaker body, still the stronger soul. 



O, what a treasure is a virtuous wife, 



Discreet and loving. Not one gift on earth 



Makes a man s life so nighly bound to heaven. 



She gives him double forces to endure 



And to enjoy, being one with him, 



Feeling his joys and griefs with equal sense : 



If he fetch sighs, she draws her breath as short ; 



If he lament, she melts herself in tears ; 



If he be glad, she triumphs ; if he stir, 



She moves his way, in all things his sweet ape, 



Himself divinely varied without change. 



All store without her leaves a man but poor, 



And with her poverty is exceeding store. 



Pope in the character I have read was drawing his ideal woman, 

 for he says at the end that she shall be his muse. The senti 

 ments are those of a bourgeois and of the back parlour, more 

 than of the poet and the muse s bower. A man s mind is known 

 by the company it keeps. 



Now it is very possible that the women of Pope s time were as 

 bad as they could be; but if God made poets for anything, it 

 was to keep alive the traditions of the pure, the holy, and the 

 beautiful. I grant the influence of the age, but there is a sense 

 in which the poet is of no age, and Beauty, driven from every 

 other home, will never be an outcast and a wanderer, while there 

 is a poet s nature left, will never fail of the tribute at least of a 

 song. It seems to me that Pope had a sense of the neat rather 

 than of the beautiful. His nature delighted more in detecting 

 the blemish than in enjoying the charm. 



However great his merit in expression, I think it impossible 

 that a true poet could have written such a satire as the Dunciad, 

 which is even nastier than it is witty. It is filthy even in a filthy 

 age, and Swift himself could not have gone beyond some parts of 

 it. One s mind needs to be sprinkled with some disinfecting 

 fluid after reading it. I do not remember that any other poet 

 ever made poverty a crime. And it is wholly without discrimi 

 nation. De Foe is set in the pillory for ever; and George 



