406 pope. 



esoteric doctrine of poetry, I felt that ardeut desire for 

 smashing the idols I had been brought up to worship, 

 without any regard to their artistic beauty, which char- 

 acterizes youthful zeal. What was it to me that Pope 

 was called a master of style 1 I felt, as Addison says 

 in his Freeholder when answering an argument in favor 

 of the Pretender because he could speak English and 

 George I. could not, " that I did not wish to be tyran- 

 nized over in the best English that ever was spoken." 

 (The young demand thoughts that find an echo in their 

 real and not their acquired nature, and care very little 

 about the dress they are put in. It is later that we 

 learn to like the conventional, as we do olivgg^. There 

 was a time when I could not read Pope, but disliked him 

 on principle as old Roger Ascham seems to have felt 

 about Italy when he says, " I was once in Italy myself, 

 but I thank God my abode there was only nine days." 



But Pope fills a very important place in the history of 

 English poetry, and must be studied by every one who 

 would come to a clear knowledge of it. I have since 

 read over every line that Pope ever wrote, and every 

 letter written by or to him, and that more than once. 

 If I have not come to the conclusion that he is the 

 greatest of poets, I believe that I am at least in a con- 

 dition to allow him every merit that is fairly his. I 

 have said that Pope as a literary man represents pre- 

 cision and grace of expression ; but as a poet he repre- 

 sents something more, — nothing less, namely, than one 

 of those eternal controversies of taste which will last 

 as long as the imagination and understanding divide 

 men between them. It is not a matter to be settled 

 by any amount of argument or demonstration. There 

 are born Popists or Wordsworthians, Lockists or Kant- 

 ists, and there-is nothing more to be said of the matter. 

 Wordsworth was not in a condition to do Pope justica 



