POPE. 311 



Wither, the author of that charming poem, Fair Virtue/ classed 

 among the dunces. And was it not in this age that loose Dick 

 Steele paid his wife the finest compliment ever paid to woman, 

 when he said that to know her was a liberal education ? 



Even in the Rape of the Lock/ the fancy is that of a wit 

 rather than of a poet. It might not be just to compare his 

 Sylphs with the Fairies of Shakespeare ; but contrast the kind 

 of fancy shown in the poem with that of Drayton s Nymphidia, 

 for example. I will give one stanza of it, describing the palace 

 of the Fairy: 



The walls of spiders s legs were made, 

 Well mortised, and finely laid ; 

 (He was the master of his trade 

 It curiously that builded) : 

 The windows of the eyes of cats, 

 And, for the roof, instead of slats 

 T is covered with the skins of bats, 

 With moonshine that are gilded. 



In the last line the eye and fancy of a poet are recognised. 



Personally we know more about Pope than about any of our 

 poets. He kept no secrets about himself. If he did not let the 

 cat out of the bag, he always contrived to give her tail a wrench 

 so that we might know she was there. In spite of the savage- 

 ness of his satires, his natural disposition seems to have been an 

 amiable one, and his character as an author was as purely fac 

 titious as his style. Dr. Johnson appears to have suspected his 

 sincerity; but artifice more than insincerity lay at the basis of 

 his character. I think that there was very little real malice in 

 him and that his evil was wrought from want of thought. 1 

 When Dennis was old and poor, he wrote a prologue for a play 

 to be acted for his benefit. Except Addison, he numbered 

 among his friends the most illustrious men of his time. 



The correspondence of Pope is, on the whole, less interesting 

 than that of any other eminent English poet, except that of 

 Southey, and their letters have the same fault of being laboured 

 compositions. Southey s are, on the whole, the more agreeable 

 of the two, for they inspire one (as Pope s certainly do not) with 

 a sincere respect for the character of the writer. Pope s are 

 altogether too full of the proclamation of his own virtues to be 

 pleasant reading. It is plain that they were mostly addressed 

 to the public, perhaps even to posterity. But letters, however 

 carefully drilled to be circumspect, are sure to blab, and those 

 of Pope leave in the reader s mind an unpleasant feeling of cir 

 cumspection of an attempt to look as an eminent literary cha 

 racter should rather than as the man really was. They have 



