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.
PART I.
Introduction: That it is as great a fault to judge ill, as to write ill, and a more dangerous one to the public, ver. 1—That a true taste is as rare to be found as a true genius, ver. 9 to 18—That most men are born with some taste, but spoiled by false education, ver. 19 to 25—The multitude of critics, and causes of them, ver. 26 to 45—That we are to study our own taste, and know the limits of it, ver. 46 to 67—Nature the best guide of judgment, ver. 68 to 87—Improved by art and rules, which are but methodised nature, ver. 88—Rules derived from the practice of the ancient poets, ver. 88 to 110—That therefore the ancients are necessary to be studied by a critic, particularly Homer and Virgil, ver. 120 to 138—Of licenses, and the use of them by the ancients, ver. 142 to 180—Reverence due to the ancients, and praise of them, ver. 181, &c.
PART II. Ver. 201, &c.
Causes hindering a true judgment—1. Pride, ver. 208—2. Imperfect learning, ver. 215—3. Judging by parts, and not by the whole, ver. 233 to 288—Critics in wit, language, versification, only, ver. 288, 305, 339, &c.—4. Being too hard to please, or too apt to admire, ver. 384—5. Partiality, too much love to a sect, to the ancients or moderns, ver. 394—6. Prejudice or prevention, ver. 408—7. Singularity, ver. 424—8. Inconstancy, ver. 430—9. Party spirit, ver. 452, &c.—10. Envy, ver. 466—Against envy and in praise of good nature, ver. 508, &c.—When severity is chiefly to be used by critics, ver. 526, &c.
PART III. Ver. 560, &c.