354 POPE. 



could not read Pope, but disliked him on principle as Old 

 Roger Ascham seems to have felt about Italy, when he 

 says, &quot; I was once in Italy myself, but I thank God my 

 abode there was only nine days.&quot; 



But Pope fills a very important place in the history of 

 English poetry, and must be studied by everyone who would 

 come to a clear knowledge of it. I have since read over 

 every line that Pope ever wrote, and every letter written 

 by or to him, and that more than once. If I have not 

 come to the conclusion that he is the greatest of poets, I 

 believe that I am at least in a condition to allow him every 

 merit that is fairly his. I have said that Pope as a literary 

 man represents precision and grace of expression ; but as a 

 poet he represents something more, nothing less, namely, 

 than one of those eternal controversies of taste which will 

 last as long as the imagination and understanding divide 

 men between them. It is not a matter to be settled by any 

 amount of argument or demonstration. There are born 

 Popists or Wordsworthians, Lockists or Kantists, and there 

 is nothing more to be said of the matter. 



Wordsworth was not in a condition to do Pope justice. 

 A man brought up in sublime mountain solitudes, and 

 whose nature was a solitude more vast than they, walking 

 an earth which quivered with the throe of the French 

 Revolution, the child of an era of profound mental and 

 moral movement, it could not be expected that he should be 

 in sympathy with the poet of artificial life. Moreover, he 

 was the apostle of imagination, and came at a time when 

 the school which Pope founded had degenerated into a mob 

 of mannerists who wrote with ease, and who with their 

 congenial critics united at once to decry poetry which 

 brought in the dangerous innovation of having a soul in it. 



But however it may be with poets, it is very certain that 

 a reader is happiest whose mind is broad enough to enjoy 

 the natural school for its nature, and the artificial for its 

 artificiality, provided they be only good of their kind. At 

 any rate, we must allow that the man who can produce one 

 perfect work is either a great genius or a very lucky one ; 



