POPE. 399 



in order to be comfortable, and what fashion so becom- 

 ing as the one we have invented in Paris *? It is not a 

 little amusing that when Voltaire played master of cer- 

 emonies to introduce the bizarre Shakespeare among his 

 countrymen, that other kind of nature made a profound- 

 er impression on them than quite pleased him. So he 

 turned about presently and called his whilome protege a 

 buffoon. 



The condition of the English mind at the close of the 

 seventeenth century was such as to make it particularly 

 sensitive to the magnetism which streamed to it from 

 Paris. The loyalty of everybody both in politics and 

 religion had been put out of joint. A generation of 

 materialists, by the natural rebound which inevitably 

 follows over-tension, was to balance the ultra-spiritualism 

 of the Puritans. As always when a political revolution 

 has been wrought by moral agencies, the plunder had 

 fallen mainly to the share of the greedy, selfish, and un- 

 scrupulous, whose disgusting cant had given a taint of 

 hypocrisy to piety itself. Religion, from a burning con- 

 viction of the soul, had grown to be with both parties a 

 political badge, as little typical of the inward man as 

 the scallop of a pilgrim. Sincerity is impossible, unless 

 it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps 

 the very foundation of character. There seems to have 

 been an universal scepticism, and in its worst form, 

 that is, with an outward conformity in the interest of 

 decorum and order. There was an unbelief that did 

 not believe even in itself. 



The difference between the leading minds of the 

 former age and that which was supplanting it went to 

 the very roots of the soul. Milton was willing to peril 

 the success of his crowning work by making the poetry 

 of it a stalking-horse for his theological convictions, 

 What was that Fame 



