POPE. 433 



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 arti- 

 ficial 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. 



THE END, 



