338 POPE. 



published in 1753, both in the choice of his subject and his 

 treatment of it gives further proof of the tendency among 

 the younger generation to revert to simpler and purer 

 models. Plainly enough, Thomson had been his chief model, 

 though there are also traces of a careful study of Milton. 



Pope had died in 1744, at the height of his renown, the 

 acknowledged monarch of letters, as supreme as Yoltaire 

 when the excite ment and exposure of his coronation cere 

 monies at Paris hastened his end a generation later. His 

 fame, like Voltaire s, was European, and the style which 

 he had carried to perfection was paramount throughout the 

 cultivated world. The new edition of the &quot; Dunciad,&quot; 

 with the Fourth Book added, published the year before his 

 death, though the substitution of Gibber for Theobald 

 made the poem incoherent, had yet increased his reputation 

 and confirmed the sway of the school whose recognised 

 head he was, by the poignancy of its satire, the lucidity of 

 its wit, and the resounding, if somewat uniform march, of 

 its numbers. He had been translated into other languages 

 living and dead. Voltaire had long before pronounced 

 him &quot; the best poet of England, and at present of all the 

 world. &quot;* It was the apotheosis of clearness, point, and 



&quot; Jamque rubrum tremulis jubar ignibus erigere alte 

 Cum cceptat natura.&quot; Lucret. iv. 404, 405. 



Gray s taste was a sensitive divining-rod of the sources whether of 

 pleasing or profound emotion in poetry. Though he prized pomp, he 

 did not undervalue simplicity of subject or treatment, if only the witch 

 Imagination had cast her spell there. Wordsworth loved solitude in 

 his appreciations as well as in his daily life, and was the readier to 

 find merit in obscurity, because it gave him the pleasure of being a 

 first discoverer all by himself. Thus he addresses a sonnet to John 

 Dyer. But Gray was one of &quot;the pure and powerful minds&quot; who had 

 discovered Dyer during his lifetime, when the discovery of poets is 

 more difficult. In 1753 he writes to Walpole &quot;Mr. Dyer has more 

 poetry in his imagination than almost any of our number, but rough 

 and injudicious.&quot; Dyer has one fine verse 



&quot; On the dark level of adversity.&quot; 



* MS. letter of Voltaire, cited by Warburton in his edition of Pope, 

 vol. iv. p. 38, note. The date is 15th October 1726. I do not find it 

 in Voltaire s Correspondence. 



