342 POPE. 



This fashion perished also by its own excess, but the criticism 

 which laid at the door of the master all the faults of his 

 pupils was unjust. It was defective, moreover, in over 

 looking how much of what we call natural is an artificial 

 product, above all in forgetting that Pope had one of the 

 prime qualities of a great poet in exactly answering the 

 intellectual needs of the age in which he lived, and in 

 reflecting its lineaments. He did in some not inadequate 

 sense hold the mirror up to nature. His poetry is not a 

 mountain-tarn, like that of Wordsworth ; it is not in 

 sympathy with the higher moods of the mind ; yet it 

 continues entertaining, in spite of all changes of mode. 

 It was a mirror in a drawing-room, but it gave back a 

 faithful image of society, powdered and rouged, to be sure, 

 and intent on trifles, yet still as human in its own way as 

 the heroes of Homer in theirs. 



For the popularity of Pope, as for that of Marini and his 

 sect, circumstances had prepared the way. English litera 

 ture for half a century after the Restoration showed the 

 marks both of a moral reaction and of an artistic vassalage 

 to France. From the compulsory saintship and cropped 

 hair of the Puritans men rushed or sneaked, as their 

 temperaments dictated, to the opposite cant of sensuality 

 and a wilderness of periwig. Charles II. had brought back 

 with him from exile French manners, French morals, and 

 above all, French taste. Misfortune makes a shallow mind 

 sceptical. It had made the king so ; and this, at a time 

 when court patronage was the main sinew of authorship, 

 was fatal to the higher qualities of literature. That Charles 

 should have preferred the stately decorums of the French 

 school, and should have mistaken its polished mannerism for 

 style, was natural enough. But there was something also 

 in the texture of the average British mind which prepared 

 it for this subjugation from the other side of the Channel. 

 No observer of men can have failed to notice the clumsy 

 respect which the understanding pays to elegance of manner 

 and savoir-faire, nor what an awkward sense of inferiority 

 it feels in the presence of an accomplished worldliness. The 



