Read, and admired, Pope must always be—if not for his poetry and passion, yet for his elegance, wit, satiric force, fidelity as a painter of artificial life, and the clear, pellucid English. But his deficiency in the creative faculty (a deficiency very marked in two of his most lauded poems we have not specified, his "Messiah" and "Temple of Fame," both eloquent imitations), his lack of profound thought, the general poverty of his natural pictures (there are some fine ones in "Eloisa and Abelard"), the coarse and bitter element often intermingled with his satire, the monotonous glitter of his verse, and the want of profound purpose in his writings, combine to class him below the first file of poets. And vain are all attempts, such as those of Byron and Lord Carlisle, to alter the general verdict. It is very difficult, after a time, either to raise or depress an acknowledged classic; and Pope must come, if he has not come already, to a peculiarly defined and strictly apportioned place on the shelf. He was unquestionably the poet of his age. But his age was far from being one of a lofty order: it was a low, languid, artificial, and lazily sceptical age. It loved to be tickled; and Pope tickled it with the finger of a master. It liked to be lulled, at other times, into half-slumber; and the soft and even monotonies of Pope's pastorals and "Windsor Forest" effected this end. It loved to be suspended in a state of semi-doubt, swung to and fro in agreeable equipoise; and the "Essay on Man" was precisely such a swing. It was fond of a mixture of strong English sense with French graces and charms of manner; and Pope supplied it. It was fond of keen, yet artfully managed satire; and Pope furnished it in abundance. It loved nothing that threatened greatly to disturb its equanimity or over-much to excite or arouse it; and there was little of this in Pope. Had he been a really great poet of the old Homer or Dante breed, he would have outshot his age, till he "dwindled in the distance;" but in lieu of immediate fame, and of elaborate lectures in the next century, to bolster it unduly up, all generations would have "risen and called him blessed."
We had intended some remarks on Pope as a prose-writer, and as a correspondent; but want of space has compelled us to confine ourselves to his poetry.
DETAILED CONTENTS
MORAL ESSAYS—
Epistle I.—Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men
Epistle II.—Of the Characters of Women
Epistle III.—Of the Use of Riches
Epistle IV.—Of the Use of Riches
Epistle V.—Occasioned by his Dialogues on Medals
TRANSLATIONS AND IMITATIONS—
Sappho to Phaon
The Fable of Dryope
Vertumnus and Pomona
The First Book of Statius's Thebais
January and May
The Wife of Bath
PROLOGUES AND EPILOGUES—
A Prologue to a Play for Mr Dennis's Benefit
Prologue to Mr Addison's 'Cato'
Prologue to Mr Thomson's 'Sophonisba'
Prologue, designed for Mr D'Urfey's Last Play
Prologue to 'The Three Hours after Marriage'
Epilogue to Mr Rowe's 'Jane Shore'
MISCELLANIES—
The Basset-Table
Lines on receiving from the Right Hon. the Lady Frances Shirley a
Standish and Two Pens
Verbatim from Boileau
Answer to the following Question of Mrs Howe
Occasioned by some Verses of His Grace the Duke of Buckingham
Macer: a Character
Song, by a Person of Quality
On a Certain Lady at Court
On his Grotto at Twickenham
Roxana, or the Drawing-Room
To Lady Mary Wortley Montague
Extemporaneous Lines on a Portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montague
Lines sung by Durastanti when she took leave of the English Stage
Upon the Duke of Marlborough's House at Woodstock
Verses left by Mr Pope, on his lying in the same bed which Wilmot slept
in at Adderbury
The Challenge
The Three Gentle Shepherds
Epigram, engraved on the Collar of a Dog
The Translator
The Looking-Glass
A Farewell to London
Sandys' Ghost
Umbra
Sylvia, a Fragment
Impromptu to Lady Winchelsea
Epigram
Epigram on the Feuds about Handel and Bononcini
On Mrs Tofts, a celebrated Opera Singer
The Balance of Europe
Epitaph on Lord Coningsby
Epigram
Epigram from the French
Epitaph on Gay
Epigram on the Toasts of the Kit-Kat Club
To a Lady, with 'The Temple of Fame'
On the Countess of Burlington cutting Paper
On Drawings of the Statues of Apollo, Venus, and Hercules
On Bentley's 'Milton'
Lines written in Windsor Forest
To Erinna
A Dialogue
Ode to Quinbus Flestrin
The Lamentation of Glumdalclitch for the Loss of Grildrig
To Mr Lemuel Gulliver
Mary Gulliver to Captain Lemuel Gulliver
1740, a Fragment of a Poem
The Fourth Epistle of the First Book of Horace
Epigram on one who made long Epitaphs
On an Old Gate
A Fragment
To Mr Gay
Argus
Prayer of Brutus
Lines on a Grotto, at Cruxeaston, Hants
THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER
THE DUNCIAD—
A Letter to the Publisher
Martinus Scriblerus, his Prolegomena
Testimonies of Authors
Martinus Scriblerus of the Poem
Recardus Aristarchus of the Hero of the Poem
Book the First
Book the Second
Book the Third
Book the Fourth
Declaration by the Author
APPENDIX—
I. Preface prefixed to the Five First imperfect Editions
II. A List of Books, Papers, and Verses
III. Advertisement to the First Edition
IV. Advertisement to the First Edition of the Fourth Book
V. Advertisement to the Complete Edition of 1743
VI. Advertisement printed in the Journals, 1730
VII. A Parallel of the Characters of Mr Dryden and Mr Pope
Index of Persons celebrated in this Poem
MORAL ESSAYS.
The 'Essay on Man' was intended to have been comprised in four books:—
The first of which, the author has given us under that title, in four epistles.
The second was to have consisted of the same number:—1. Of the extent and limits of human reason. 2. Of those arts and sciences, and of the parts of them, which are useful, and therefore attainable, together with those which are unuseful, and therefore unattainable. 3. Of the nature, ends, use, and application of the different capacities of men. 4. Of the use of learning, of the science of the world, and of wit; concluding with a satire against the misapplication of them, illustrated by pictures, characters, and examples.
The third book regarded civil regimen, or the science of politics, in which the several forms of a republic were to have been examined and explained; together with the several modes of religious worship, as far forth as they affect society; between which the author always supposed there was the most interesting relation and closest connexion; so that this part would have treated of civil and religious society in their full extent.