432 POPE. 



with his usual insight, parenthetically qualifies his state- 

 ment ; for where Pope, as in the " Rape of the Lock," 

 found a subject exactly level with his genius, he was 

 able to make what, taken for all in all, is the most per- 

 fect poem in the language. 



It will hardly be questioned that the man who writes 

 what is still piquant and rememberable, a century and 

 a quarter after his death, was a man of genius. But 

 there are two modes of uttering such things as cleave to 

 the memory of mankind. They may be said or sung. 

 1 do not think that Pope's verse anywhere sings, but it 

 shoidd seem that the abiding pi^esence of fancy in his 

 best work forbids his exclusion from the rank of poet. 

 The atmosphere in which he habitually dwelt was an 

 essentially prosaic one, the language habitual to him 

 was that of conversation and society, so that he lacked 

 the help of that fresher dialect which seems like inspii'a- 

 tion in the elder poets. His range of associations was 

 of that narrow kind which is always vulgar, whether 

 it -be found in the village or the court. Certainly he 

 has not the force and majesty of Dryden in his better 

 moods, but he has a grace, a finesse, an art of being 

 pungent, a sensitiveness to impressions, that would in- 

 cline us to rank him with Voltaire (whom in many waj's 

 he so much resembles), as an author with whom the 

 gift of writing was primary, and that of verse secondary. 

 No other poet that I remember ever wrote prose which 

 is so purely prose as his ; and yet, in any impartial crit- 

 icism, the " Rape of the Lock " sets him even as a poet 

 far above many men more largely endowed with poetic 

 feeling and insight than he. 



A great deal must be allowed to Pope for the age in 

 which he lived, and not a little, I think, for the influence 

 of Swift. In his own province he still stands unapproach- 

 ably alone. If to be the greatest satirist of individual 



