373 POPE. 



A great deal must be allowed to Pope for the age in which 

 he lived, and not a little, I think, for the influence of Swift. 

 In his own province he still stands unapproachably alone. 

 If to be the greatest satirist of individual men, rather than 

 of human nature, if to be the highest expression which the 

 life of the court and the ball-room has ever found in verse, 

 if to have added more phrases to our language than any 

 other but Shakespeare, if to have charmed four generations 

 make a man a great poet, then he is one. He was the chief 

 founder of an artificial style of writing, which in his hands 

 was living and powerful, because he used it to express 

 artificial modes of thinking and an artificial state of society. 

 Measured by any high standard of imagination, he will be 

 found wanting ; tried by any test of wit, he is unrivalled. 



Printed ly WALTER SCOTT, Felling, Xeivcavtle-on-Tync. 



