Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

The ancients, according to Pope, had a moral as well as an intellectual superiority. Of old the poets "who but endeavoured well," were praised by their brethren. Now those who reached the heights of Parnassus "employed their pains in spurning down others." Of old again the professional critic was "generous and fanned the poet's fire." Now critics hated the poet, and all the more that they had learned from him the art of criticism.[39] A freedom from jealousy, a liberality of eulogy were universal with pagans; malice and envy reigned supreme in Christendom. Upon this false pretext Pope had the luxury of indulging in the vice he reprobated. He preached up "good-nature," he would suffer no leaven of "spleen and sour disdain,"[40] and his Essay throughout is a diatribe against English critics. The entire crew were spiteful blockheads without sense or principle. The excessive rancour points to some personal offence, and it is probable that his estimate of critics was regulated by their low opinion of his Pastorals, which was the chief work he had hitherto published. When he speaks of poets he keeps no better to the leniency he advocates. He would "sometimes have censure restrained, and would charitably let the dull be vain," upon the uncharitable allegation that the more they were corrected the worse they grew. He engrafts upon his recommendation of a "charitable silence," an invective against the inferior versifiers who, in their old age, have not discovered that they are superannuated. For this inability to detect the decay of their faculties he calls them "shameless bards, impenitently bold."[41] No error of judgment had a stronger claim to be treated with tenderness, and the bitterness of the passage was the less excusable that it was certainly directed against his former friend Wycherley.

There are other contradictions in the Essay, and several of the minor positions are glaringly erroneous. Dennis was within the truth when he said of the whole that it was "very superficial." There remains the question whether the poem is remarkable for the beauty of expression signalised by Addison and Hazlitt. Pope intended his work to be a combination of highly wrought passages, and of that more easy style described by Dryden, when he says--

And this unpolished, rugged verse I chose,
As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose.[42]

The parts of the Essay which are pitched in the highest key, are far the best, and where Pope borrowed the imagery, as in the simile of the traveller ascending the Alps, the lines owe their splendour to his improvements. The similes designed to be witty are less happy. One or two only are good; the rest have little point or appropriateness. Anxious to string together as many smart comparisons as possible, Pope was careless of consistency. Speaking of the futility of abusing paltry versifiers, he says,

Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep,
And lashed so long, like tops, are lashed asleep.
False steps but help them to renew the race,
As, after stumbling, jades will mend their pace.[43]

The meaning of the first couplet seems to be that bad poets become callous by castigation, and indifferent to censure; the meaning of the second that failure stimulated them to improvement. In the first couplet they proceed from drowsiness to slumber; in the second their false steps stir them up to mend their pace. They are first represented as proceeding from bad to worse, and then from bad to better. The attempt in the Essay to turn common prose into rhyme is only partially successful. Dryden and Byron, the greatest masters in different ways of the familiar style, pour out words in their natural order with a marvellous vigour and facility. The merit is in this unforced idiomatic flow of the language, unimpeded by the shackles of rhymes. Almost anybody may convert ordinary prose into defective verse, and much of the verse in the Essay on Criticism is of a low order. The phraseology is frequently mean and slovenly, the construction inverted and ungrammatical, the ellipses harsh, the expletives feeble, the metre inharmonious, the rhymes imperfect. Striving to be poetical, Pope fell below bald and slip-shod prose. Examples lie thick, and a couple of specimens will be enough:

But when t'examine ev'ry part he came.
Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.

The transposition of the verb for the sake of the rhyme was the rule with Pope. He habitually succumbed to the difficulty of preserving the legitimate arrangement of words; yet it is an anomaly in literature that with his powers and patient industry he could tolerate such despicable examples of the licence, and this in enunciating hacknied precepts, only to be raised above insipidity by the perfection with which they were moulded into verse. Where the plain portions of the poem are not positively bad, they are seldom of any peculiar excellence. Mediocrity, relieved by occasional well-wrought passages, forms the staple of the work, and Hazlitt must surely have given loose to one of his wilful paradoxes when he contended that the general characteristics of the Essay were originality, thought, strength, terseness, wit, felicitous expression, and brilliant illustration.

In its metrical qualities the Essay on Criticism is the worst of Pope's poems. One blemish is a want of variety in his final words. "There are," says Hazlitt, "no less than half a score couplets rhyming to _sense_. This appears almost incredible without giving the instances, and no less so when they are given."

But of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.--lines 3, 4.

In search of wit, these lose their common sense,
And then turn critics in their own defence.--l. 28, 29.

Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.--l. 209, 10.

Some by old words to fame have made pretence,
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense.--l. 324, 5.

'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.--l. 364, 5.

At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence,
That always shows great pride, or little sense.--l. 386, 7.

Be silent always when you doubt your sense;
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence.--l. 566, 7.

Be niggards of advice on no pretence:
For the worst avarice is that of sense.--l. 578, 9.

Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense,
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.--l. 608, 9.

Horace still charms with graceful negligence,
And without method talks us into sense.--l. 653, 4.

The corresponding word which forms the rhyme is not always varied. "Offence" is used three times, and "defence" and "pretence" are each employed twice.

Hazlitt might have remarked, that _wit_ was even more favoured than _sense_, and was used with greater laxity. A wit, in the reign of Queen Anne was not only a jester, but any author of distinction; and wit, besides its special signification, was still sometimes employed as synonymous with mind. The ordinary generic and specific meanings, already confusing and fruitful in ambiguities, were not sufficient for Pope. A wit with him was now a jester, now an author, now a poet, and now, again, was contradistinguished from poets. Wit was the intellect, the judgment, the antithesis to judgment, a joke, and poetry. The word does duty, with a perplexing want of precision, throughout the essay, and furnishes a dozen rhymes alone:

Nature to all things fixed the limits fit,
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.--lines 52, 3.

One science only will one genius fit;
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.--l. 60, 1.

A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ.--l. 233, 4.

Nor lose for that malignant dull delight,
The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit.--l. 237, 8.

As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T'avoid great errors, must the less commit.--l. 259, 60.

Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit;
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.--l. 291, 2.

As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.--l. 301, 2.

So schismatics the plain believers quit,
And are but damned for having too much wit.--l. 428, 9.

Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,
The current folly proves the ready wit.--l. 448, 9.

Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ:
Nay, wits had pensions, and young lords had wit.--l. 538, 9.

Received his laws; and stood convinced 'twas fit,
Who conquered nature, should preside o'er wit.--l. 651, 2.

He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit,
Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ.--l. 657, 8.

In these twelve instances "wit" rhymes five times to "fit," and three times to "writ." The monotony extends much farther. "Art," in the singular or plural, terminates eight lines, and in every case rhymes to "part," "parts," or "imparts."

Imperfect rhymes abound. The examples which follow occur in the order in which they are set down. "None, own--showed, trod--proved, beloved--steer, character--esteem, them--full, rule--take, track--rise, precipice--thoughts, faults--joined, mankind--delight, wit--appear, regular--caprice, nice--light, wit--good, blood--glass, place--sun, upon--still, suitable--ear, repair--join, line--line, join--Jove, love--own, town--fault, thought--worn, turn--safe, laugh--lost, boast--boast, lost (_bis_)--join, divine--prove, love--ease, increase--care, war--join, shine--disapproved, beloved--take, speak--fool, dull--satires, dedicators--read, head--speaks, makes--extreme, phlegm--find, joined--joined, mind--revive, live--chased, passed--good, blood--desert, heart--receive, give." In numerous instances, "the weight of the rhyme," as Johnson expresses it, when speaking of Denham, "is laid upon a word too feeble to sustain it."

Some positive, persisting fops we know,
Who, if once wrong, will needs be always _so_;

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow,
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us _so_.

Several lines are not metrical unless pronounced with a wrong emphasis, as

False eloquēnce like thē prismatic glass,

which only ceases to be prose when "the," and the last syllable of "eloquence," are accentuated, and it is then no longer English. Examples like

Atones not fōr that envy which it brings;
That in̄ proud dullness joins with quality;
That not alone what tō your sense is due;

are not much better. Many of the verses, and this last is a specimen, offend the ear by the succession of "low" and "creeping words." Pope belonged to the class of kings he mentions in his poem, who freely dispensed with the laws they had made.

Johnson, commenting on Pope's attempt to adapt the sound to the sense, thinks it a contradiction, that he employed an Alexandrine to describe the swiftness of Camilla, and thirty years afterwards used the same measure to denote "the march of slow-paced majesty." There was no need to look for an instance at the interval of thirty years. It would have been found at an interval of half thirty lines in the Essay on Criticism, where an Alexandrine is introduced to portray the dragging progress of the wounded snake. The juxtaposition was doubtless deliberate for the purpose of illustrating the opposite movements of sluggishness and celerity. Johnson misunderstood the theory. The Alexandrine was not supposed to represent speed, but space. Thus when Pope describes the wound of Menelaus, in his translation of the Iliad, he says in a note, "Homer is very particular here in giving the picture of the blood running in a long trace, lower and lower. The author's design being only to image the streaming of the blood, it seemed equivalent to make it trickle through the length of an Alexandrine line."

As down thy snowy thigh distilled the streaming flood.

A long line being presumed to suggest the motion of a long distance, the retarded or accelerated motion was intended to be expressed by the slow or rapid syllables of which the line was composed. The end was not answered, because, as Johnson remarks, the break in the middle of the Alexandrine is antagonistic to haste, and he has equally shown that Pope was not happy in the application of his mistaken rule. The slow march outstrips the swift Camilla, who is even left behind by the wounded snake in the first half of the line. Had the examples been a complete illustration of the theory, the gain would have been nothing. Representative metre, in the strict sense of the term, though sanctioned by eminent names, would degrade poetry. There cannot be a paltrier poetic effect than to mimic the roll of stones, the trickling of blood, and the dragging motion of wounded snakes.

"Mr. Walsh used to tell me," says Pope, "that there was one way left of excelling; for though we had several great poets, we never had any one great poet that was correct, and he desired me to make that my study and aim."[44] Warton calls this "very important advice,"[45] and both he and Pope seem to assume that it had been effectual. The notion has been generally accepted. "To distinguish this triumvirate from each other," says Young, "Swift is a singular wit, Pope a correct poet, Addison a great author."[46] "He is the most perfect of our poets," said Byron; "the only poet whose faultlessness has been made his reproach."[47] Hazlitt took the opposite side. "Those critics who are bigoted idolisers of our author, chiefly on the score of his correctness, seem to be of opinion that there is but one perfect writer, even Pope. This is, however, a mistake; his excellence is by no means faultlessness. If he had no great faults, he is full of little errors. His grammatical construction is often lame and imperfect. His rhymes are constantly defective, being rhymes to the eye instead of the ear; and this to a greater degree, not only than in later, but than in preceding, writers. The praise of his versification must be confined to its uniform smoothness and harmony. In the translation of the Iliad, which has been considered as his masterpiece in style and execution, he continually changes the tenses in the same sentence for the purposes of the rhyme, which shows either a want of technical resources, or great inattention to punctilious exactness."[48] De Quincey confirms Hazlitt; but, with his profounder knowledge of the characteristics of Pope's poetry, he saw that the incorrectness was spread wider, and went deeper. "Let us ask," he says, "what is meant by correctness? Correctness in developing the thought? In connecting it, or effecting the transitions? In the use of words? In the grammar? In the metre?" In all these points he maintains that Pope, "by comparison with other great poets, was conspicuously deficient."[49] For an example of incorrectness in developing the thought De Quincey refers to the character of Addison:

Who would not laugh, if such a man there be?
Who but must weep if Atticus were he?

"Why must we laugh? Because we find a grotesque assembly of noble and ignoble qualities. Very well; but why, then, must we weep? Because this assemblage is found actually existing in an eminent man of genius. Well, that is a good reason for weeping; we weep for the degradation of human nature. But then revolves the question, Why must we laugh? Because, if the belonging to a man of genius were a sufficient reason for weeping, so much we know from the very first. The very first line says,

Peace to all such: but were there one whose fires
_True genius kindles_, and fair fame aspires.

Thus falls to the ground the whole antithesis of this famous character. We are to change our mood from laughter to tears upon a sudden discovery that the character belonged to a man of genius; and this we had already known from the beginning. Match us this prodigious oversight in Shakspeare."[50] Pope was still more deficient in logical correctness, in the power of preserving consistency, and coherency between congregated ideas. "Of all poets," says De Quincey, "that have practised reasoning in verse he is the one most inconsequential in the deduction of his thoughts, and the most severely distressed in any effort to effect or to explain the dependency of their parts. There are not ten consecutive lines in Pope unaffected by this infirmity. All his thinking proceeded by insulated and discontinuous jets, and the only resource for him, or chance of even seeming correctness, lay in the liberty of stringing his aphoristic thoughts, like pearls, having no relation to each other but that of contiguity."[51] Many of his arguments are capable of a double construction; absolute contradictions are not uncommon; and when we try to get a connected view of his principles we are irritated by their discordance, indefiniteness, and obscurity. As little will his grammar bear the test of correctness. "His syntax," says De Quincey, "is so bad as to darken his meaning at times, and at other times to defeat it. Preterites and participles he constantly confounds, and registers this class of blunders for ever by the cast-iron index of rhymes that never _can_ mend." Another defect of language was, in De Quincey's opinion, "almost peculiar to Pope." "The language does not realise the idea: it simply suggests or hints it. Thus, to give a single illustration:

Know God and Nature only are the same;
In man the judgment shoots at flying game.

The first line one would naturally construe into this: that God and Nature were in harmony, whilst all other objects were scattered into incoherency by difference and disunion. Not at all; it means nothing of the kind; but that God and Nature only are exempted from the infirmities of change. This _might_ mislead many readers; but the second line _must_ do so: for who would not understand the syntax to be, that the judgment, as it exists in man, shoots at flying game? But, in fact, the meaning is, that the judgment in aiming its calculations at man, aims at an object that is still on the wing, and never for a moment stationary."[52] This, De Quincey contends, is the worst of all possible faults in diction, since perspicuity, ungrammatical and inelegant, is preferable to conundrums of which the solution is difficult, and often doubtful. He says that there are endless varieties of the vice in Pope, and that "he sought relief for himself from half an hour's labour at the price of utter darkness to his reader." De Quincey was in error when he imputed the imperfections to indolence. There never was a more painstaking poet than Pope. His works were slowly elaborated, and diligently revised. "I corrected," he says, "because it was as pleasant to me to correct as to write,"[53] and his manuscripts attest his untiring efforts to mend his composition. Language and not industry failed him. Happy in a multitude of phrases, lines, couplets, and passages, his vocabulary and turns of expression were often unequal to the exactions of verse. Not even rhymes, dearly purchased by violations of grammar and a false order of words, nor the imperfection of the rhymes themselves, could always enable him to satisfy the double requirement of metre and clearness. Most of his usual deviations from correctness are especially prominent in the Essay on Criticism, and any one who reads it with common attention might be tempted to think that the claim which Warton and others set up for Pope, was an insidious device to injure his reputation by diverting attention from his merits, and basing his fame upon a foundation too unstable to support it. The advice of Walsh was foolish. A poet who believed originality to be exhausted, and who merely aspired to echo his predecessors, with no distinguishing quality of his own beyond some additional correctness, might have spared his pains. The correct imitator would be intolerable by the side of the fresh and vigorous genius he copied. The assumption that the domain of poetic thought had been traversed in every direction, and that no untrodden paths were left for future explorers, was itself a delusion, soon to be refuted by Pope's own Rape of the Lock. Many immortal works have since belied the shallow doctrine of Walsh, who made his dim perceptions the measure of intellectual possibilities. The aspects under which the world, animate and inanimate, may be regarded by the poet are practically endless. The latent truths of science do not offer to the philosopher a more unbounded field of novelty.

CONTENTS.