POPE. 389 



enough, Thomson had been his chief model, though 

 there are also traces of a careful study of Milton. 



Pope had died in 1744, at the height of his renown, 

 the acknowledged monarch of letters, as supreme as Vol- 

 taire when the excitement and exposure of his corona- 

 tion-ceremonies at Paris hastened his end a generation 

 later. His fame, like Voltaire's, was European, and the 

 style which he had carried to perfection was paramount 

 throughout the cultivated world. The new edition of 

 the " Dunciad," with the Fourth Book added, published 

 the year before his death, though the substitution of 

 Cibber for Theobald made the poem incoherent, had yet 

 increased his reputation and confirmed the sway of the 

 school whose recognized head he was, by the poignancy 

 of its satire, the lucidity of its wit, and the resounding, 

 if somewhat uniform march, of its numbers. He had 

 been translated into other languages living and dead. 

 Voltaire had long before pronounced him " the best poet 

 of England, and at present of all the world." * It was 

 the apotheosis of clearness, point, and technical skill, of 

 the ease that comes of practice, not of the fulness of 

 original power. And yet, as we have seen, while he was 

 in the very plenitude of his power, there was already a 

 widespread discontent, a feeling that what " comes near- 

 est," as Phillips calls it, may yet be infinitely far from 

 giving those profounder and incalculable satisfactions of 

 which the soul is capable in poetry. A movement was 

 gathering strength which prompted 



" The age to quit their clogs 

 By the known rules of virtuous liberty." 



Nor was it wholly confined to England. Symptoms of a 

 similar reaction began to show themselves on the Conti- 



* MS. letter of Voltaire, cited by Warburton in his edition of Pope, 

 Vol. IV. p. 38, note. The date is 15th October, 1726. I do not find 

 it in Voltaire's Correspondence. 



