POPE. 335 



POPE. 



IN 1675 Edward Phillips, the elder of Milton s nephews, 

 published his &quot; Theatrum Poetarum.&quot; In his Preface and 

 elsewhere there can be little doubt that he reflected the 

 aesthetic principles and literary judgments of his now illus 

 trious uncle, who had died in obscurity the year before.* 

 The great poet who gave to English blank verse the grand 

 eur and compass of organ-music, and who in his minor 

 poems kept alive the traditions of Fletcher and Shakespeare, 

 died with no foretaste, and yet we may believe as confident 

 as ever, of that &quot;immortality of fame&quot; which he tells his 

 friend Diodati he was &quot;meditating with the help of Heaven&quot; 

 in his youth. He who may have seen Shakespeare, who 

 doubtless had seen Fletcher, and who perhaps personally 

 knew Jonson,t lived to see the false school of writers whom 

 he qualified as &quot;good rhymists, but no poets,&quot; at once the 

 idols and the victims of the taste they had corrupted. As 

 he saw, not without scorn, how they found universal hear 

 ing, while he slowly won his audience, fit though few, did he 

 ever think of the hero of his own epic at the ear of Eve 1 

 It is not impossible ; but however that may be, he sowed in 

 his nephew s book the dragon s teeth of that long war 

 which, after the lapse of a century and a-half, was to end 

 in the expulsion of the usurping dynasty and the restoration 

 of the ancient and legitimate race whose claim rested on the 

 grace of God. In the following passage surely the voice is 

 Milton s, though the hand be that of Phillips: &quot;Wit, 

 ingenuity, and learning in verse, even elegancy itself, 

 though that comes nearest, are one thing; true native 

 poetry is another, in which there is a certain air and spirit, 

 which, perhaps, the most learned and judicious in other arts 

 do not perfectly apprehend ; much less is it attainable by 



* Tins was Thomas Warton s opinion. 



t Milton, a London boy, was in his eighth, seventeenth, and 

 twenty-ninth years, respectively, when Shakespeare (1616), Fletcher 

 (1625), and B. Jonson (1637) died. 



