386 POPE. 



half, was to end in the expulsion of the usurping dynasty 

 and the restoration of the ancient and legitimate race 

 whose claim rested on the grace of God. In the follow- 

 ing passage surely the voice is Milton's, though the hand 

 be that of Phillips : " Wit, ingenuity, and learning in 

 verse, even elegancy itself, though that comes nearest, 

 are one thing ; true native poetry is another, in which 

 there is a certain air and spirit, which, perhaps, the 

 most learned and judicious in other arts do not perfectly 

 apprehend ; much less is it attainable by any art or 

 study." The man who speaks of elegancy as coming 

 nearest, certainly shared, if he was not repeating, the 

 opinions of him who thirty years before had said that 

 "decorum" (meaning a higher or organic unity) was 

 " the grand masterpiece to observe " in poetry.* 



It is upon this text of Phillips (as Chalmers has re- 

 marked) that Joseph Warton bases his classification of 

 poets in the dedication to Young of the first volume of 

 his essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, published 

 in 1756. That was the earliest public and official dec- 

 laration of war against the reigning mode, though pri- 

 vate hostilities and reprisals had been going on for some 

 time. Addison's panegyric of Milton in the Spectator 

 was a criticism, not the less damaging because indirect, 

 of the superficial poetry then in vogue. His praise of 

 the old ballads condemned by innuendo the artificial 

 elaboration of the drawing-room pastoral by contrasting 

 it with the simple sincerity of nature. Himself inca- 

 pable of being natural except in prose, he had an in- 

 stinct for the genuine virtues of poetry as sure as that 

 of Gray. Thomson's " Winter " (1 726) was a direct pro- 

 test against the literature of Good Society, going as it 

 did to prove that the noblest society was that of one's 

 own mind heightened by the contemplation of outward 

 * In his Tractate on Education. 



