Even while Pope's popularity was at its height, signs of protest appeared against the limitations of the classical school. The poetry of natural description was warmly welcomed when Dyer's Grongar Hill was published in 1726 and Thomson's Seasons in 1730. Dyer wrote in flexible octosyllabics and Thomson in blank verse. Shenstone returned to the Spenserian stanza for his Schoolmistress, 1742, and Thomson for his Castle of Indolence, 1748. Collins's little volume of Odes, published in 1746,-'a still-born immortal,' according to Mr Swinburne,-contained the work of 'a poet who was content to sing out what he had in him-to sing and not to say, without a glimpse of wit or a flash of eloquence.' Gray has recourse to natural scenery to illustrate his reflexions on human life in the Elegy. Goldsmith, indeed, uses the decasyllabic couplet, and is to this extent the pupil of Pope, but he abounds in picturesque touches drawn from rural scenes. And when we reach Cowper and Crabbe we see that the revolt against conventionalism is complete1. 1 The emperor Augustus possessed a taste for literature and bestowed a wise and liberal patronage upon Roman authors. Virgil and Horace were among the poets who enjoyed his favour. As the Augustan age was the most brilliant period in the history of Roman literature, the term has been applied to periods which were considered similar in the literary history of other countries. So the reign of Louis XIV. has been called the Augustan age of French literature, and the reign of Anne the Augustan age of English literature. The writers of Anne's day produced nothing to merit this eulogy. Their principal service consisted in the development of our modern prose. Their poetry was often, in Taine's words, 'only more elaborate prose, subjected to the restraint of rhyme' (History of English Literature, Vol. III. p. 356). Nor is the application of the term justified by any bestowal of royal bounty. It is true that some of the poets filled high positions under government. "There were great prizes,' says Thackeray, 'in the profession which had made Addison a Minister, and Prior an Ambassador, and Steele a Commissioner, and Swift all but a Bishop' (English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, p. 521). But these prizes were bestowed as rewards for political services, and not from any desire to promote the dignity of the literary calling. 'It is surely superfluous,' says Dr Johnson, 'to answer the question that has once been asked, Whether Pope was a poet; otherwise than by asking in return, If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found? To circumscribe poetry by a definition will only shew the narrowness of the definer, though a definition which shall exclude Pope will not easily be made1.' Warton comes to the conclusion that the largest portion of Pope's works 'is of the didactic, moral, and satiric kind, 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; not that the author of the Rape of the Lock...can be thought to want imagination; but because his imagination was not his predominant talent?' In the Dedication of his treatise Warton says, 'The sublime and the pathetic are the two chief nerves of all genuine poesy. What is there transcendently sublime or pathetic in Pope?' And again: 'A clear head and acute understanding are not sufficient alone to make a poet: the most solid observations on human life, expressed with the utmost elegance and brevity, are morality, not poetry....It is a creative and glowing imagination—acer spiritus ac vis-and that alone, that can stamp a writer with this exalted and very uncommon character, which so few possess, and of which so few can properly judge3.' Mr Lowell replies that ‘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 was not a poet at all.' And 1 Lives of the Poets, Pope,' pp. 431-2. 2 Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, Vol. II. pp. 401-2. 3 Ibid. Vol. I. pp. ii., vi. 4 My Study Windows, ' Pope,' p. 375. L L > the same view is taken by Mr Courthope. 'To say that one species of poetry is more poetic than another, is like saying that one species of horse, the race-horse, is more equine than the carriage-horse or the hunter1' Perhaps this retort is hardly so convincing as it seems. There is generally some danger in accepting an illustration in place of an argument. If we borrow our figure from the boudoir instead of borrowing it from the stable, the anomaly vanishes. A lady's bracelet may be made of gold of 9-carats or of 18carats, and we should be justified in saying that the hall-marked specimen of 18-carat manufacture is more golden than its Brummagem 9-carat counterpart. This is a mere juggling with words, however, quite out of keeping with our present inquiry, which is serious. Whether or not we choose to call Pope a poet is a matter of small moment, but to consider what the characteristics of poetry actually are and to determine the extent to which these characteristics are present in Pope's writings may be a useful exercise. Let us see whether Matthew Arnold will be of any aid to us in the investigation. "There can be no more useful help,' he says, 'for discovering what poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry. Of course we are not to require this other poetry to resemble them; it may be very dissimilar. But if we have any tact we shall find them, when we have lodged them well in our minds, an infallible touchstone for detecting the presence or absence of high poetic quality, and also the degree of this quality, in' all poetry which we may place beside them. Short passages, even single lines, will serve our turn quite sufficiently... Take of Shakespeare a line or two of Henry the Fourth's expostulation with sleep : Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 1 Pope's Works, 'Life,' Vol. v. p. 367. and take, as well, Hamlet's dying request to Horatio :— If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain 'Take of Milton that Miltonic passage : Darken'd so, yet shone Above them all the arch-angel; but his face 'Add two such lines as : And courage never to submit or yield And what is else not to be overcome... and finish with the exquisite close to the loss of Proserpine, the loss -which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world. 'These few lines, if we have tact and can use them, are enough even of themselves to keep clear and sound our judgments about poetry, to save us from fallacious estimates of it, to conduct us to a real estimate.... Critics give themselves great labour to draw out what in the abstract constitutes the characters of a high quality of poetry. It is much better simply to have recourse to concrete examples ;-to take specimens of poetry of the high, the very highest quality, and to say: The characters of a high quality of poetry are what is expressed there. They are far better recognised by being felt in the verse of the master, than by being perused in the prose of the critic1.' We are to determine the poet's claim to true excellence therefore by the application of these or similar verses of standard merit, just as we should measure his height by the application of a foot-rule, or take his temperature by the application of a clinical thermometer. And if we have tact-Matthew Arnold twice insists upon this condition-if we have tact and can use our poetical touchstones properly, we shall be able to 1 Ward's English Poets, Introduction, Vol. I. pp. xxv.—xxviii. 6 arrange our poets in order of merit with the minute accuracy of an examination class-list. But it is just the introduction of this condition which robs the testing apparatus of its simplicity and precision. How much are we to allow in each case for the personal equation' of the critic? Listen to Matthew Arnold on another occasion: 'Since I have been reproached with undervaluing Lord Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome, let me frankly say that, to my mind, a man's power to detect the ring of false metal in those Lays is a good measure of his fitness to give an opinion about poetical matters at all. Macaulay's To all the men upon this earth it is hard to read without a cry of pain1.' I say Lord Clearly therefore we lack the competence rightly to use the instruments with which we have been equipped, if we can read, undisturbed by painful emotion, the poor little couplet which prompts Matthew Arnold to agonized expression. Yet some of us might urge, if it were necessary, in Macaulay's defence, that on the lips of an early Roman fighting-man, in the days when the world was still young, the sentiment was not altogether inappropriate, though indeed it has been worn rather threadbare during four-and-twenty centuries of subsequent use. Shakespeare presents us with a similar truth, distressingly hackneyed, no doubt, when he says2— 'That we shall die, we know; 'tis but the time and in the like remark of Hamlet3 'All that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity,' candour compels us to recognise an entire lack of freshness. So instead of attempting to gauge the poetic qualities of 1 Last Words on Translating Homer. 2 Julius Cæsar, III. i. 99. 3 Hamlet, 1. ii. 72. |