POPE. 429 



that Pope's satire is not founded on knowledge, but 

 rather on what his own sensitive suspicion divined of 

 the opinions of one whose expressed preferences in po 

 etry implied a condemnation of the very grounds of the 

 satirist's own popularity. We shall not so easily give 

 up the purest and most dignified figure of that some 

 what vulgar generation, who ranks with Sidney and 

 Spenser, as one of the few perfect gentlemen in our lit 

 erary annals. A man who could command the unswerv 

 ing loyalty of honest and impulsive Dick Steele could 

 not have been a coward or a backbiter. The only justi 

 fication alleged by Pope was of the flimsiest kind, namely, 

 that Addison regretted the introduction of the sylphs in 

 the second edition of the " Rape of the Lock," saying that 

 the poem was merum sal before. Let any one ask him 

 self how he likes an author's emendations of any poem 

 to which his ear had adapted itself in its former shape, 

 and he will hardly think it needful to charge Addison 

 with any mean motive for his conservatism in this mat 

 ter. One or two of Pope's letters are so good as to 

 make us regret that he did not oftener don the dressing- 

 gown and slippers in his correspondence. One in par 

 ticular, to Lord Burlington, describing a journey on 

 horseback to Oxford with Lintot the bookseller, is full 

 of a lightsome humor worthy of Cowper, almost worthy 

 of Gray. 



Joseph Warton, in summing up at the end of his 

 essay on the genius and writings of Pope, says that the 

 largest part of his works " is of the didactic, moral, and 

 satiric ; and, consequently, not of the most poetic species 

 of poetry ; whence it is manifest that good sense and 

 judgment were his characteristical excellences rather than 

 fancy and invention." It is plain that in any strict 

 definition there can be only one kind of poetry, and 

 that what Warton really meant to say was that Pope 



