366 POPE. 



So that we are no better off than the unturtored Indian, 

 after the poet has tutored us. Dr. Warburtoii makes a 

 rather lame attempt to ward off the charge of Spinozism 

 from this last passage. He would have found it harder to 

 show that the acknowledgment of any divine revelation 

 would not overturn the greater part of its teachings. If 

 Pope intended by his poem all that the bishop takes for 

 granted in his commentary, we must deny him what is 

 usually claimed as his first merit clearness. If he did 

 not, we grant him clearness as a writer at the expense of 

 sincerity as a man. Perhaps a more charitable solution of 

 the difficulty would be, that Pope s precision of thought 

 was no match for the fluency of his verse. 



Lord Byron goes so far as to say, in speaking of Pope, 

 that he who executes the best, no matter what his depart 

 ment, will rank the highest, I think there are enough 

 indications in these letters of Byron s, however, that they 

 were written rather more against Wordsworth than for 

 Pope. The rule he lays down would make Voltaire a 

 greater poet, in some respects, than Shakespeare. Byron 

 cites Petrarch as an example; yet if Petrarch had put 

 nothing more into the sonnets than execution, there are 

 plenty of Italian sonneteers who would be his match. But, 

 in point of fact, the department chooses the man and not 

 the man the department, and it has a great deal to do with 

 our estimate of him. Is the department of Milton no 

 higher than that of Butler 1 Byron took especial care not 

 to write in the style he commended. But I think Pope 

 has received quite as much credit in respect even of execu 

 tion as he deserves. Surely execution is not confined to 

 versification alone. What can be worse than this ? 



11 At length Erasmus, that great, injured name, 

 (The glory of the priesthood and the shame,) 

 Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age, 

 And drove those holy vandals off the stage.&quot; 



It would have been hard for Pope to have found a prettier 

 piece of confusion in any of the small authors he laughed at 

 than this image of a great, injured name stemming a torrent 



