Such did of old poetic laws impart,
And what till then was fury turned to art.
[256] Between ver. 646 and 647, I have found the following lines, since suppressed by the author:
That bold Columbus of the realms of wit,
Whose first discovery's not exceeded yet.
Led by the light of the Mæonian star,
He steered securely, and discovered far.
He, when all nature was subdued before,
Like his great pupil, sighed and longed for more;
Fancy's wild regions yet unvanquished lay,
A boundless empire, and that owned no sway.
Poets, &c.—Warburton.
[257] Dr. Knightly Chetwood to Lord Roscommon:
Hoist sail, bold writers! search, discover far;
You have a compass for a polar star.—Wakefield.
[258] After ver. 648, in the first edition, came this couplet:
Not only nature did his laws obey,
But fancy's boundless empire owned his sway.
Dennis denied that nature obeyed the laws of Aristotle. "The laws of nature," he said, "are unalterable but by God himself." Pope's language is inaccurate.
[259] The obvious interpretation of this passage would be that poets, Homer excepted, indulged in "savage liberty" till they were restrained by the laws of Aristotle, which is inconsistent with ver. 92-99, where Pope says that the Greek critics framed their laws from the practice of the poets.
[260] He presided over wit by his Rhetoric and Poetics, and gave proofs by his Physics that he had "conquered nature." Pope's panegyric on the dominion exercised by Aristotle is far inferior to Dryden's celebration of the deliverance from it.