The revival of the Pope quarrels.
With him we leave the “majorities”—those who, whether greater or lesser critics, were great either as such or in other paths of letters. Some smaller, but in some cases not so small, persons remain, with one or two examples—one specially famous—of what we have called “the Adversaries.” And first we must touch (if only in order to deal with yet another of the majorities themselves, who has seemed to some to be a critic) on the “Pope a Poet” quarrel.
Bowles.
We have seen[[535]] that this quarrel, originally raised by Joseph Warton, was even by him latterly waged as by one cauponans bellum; but a lazily and gingerly waged war is generally a long one, and this instance did not discredit the rule. Johnson’s intervention[[536]] in it, in his Life of Pope, was sensible and moderate—indeed, with certain necessary allowances, it is fairly decisive. But Pope, among his other peculiarities, has had the fate of making foes of his editors, and this was the case with the Reverend William Lisle Bowles, who revived the fainting battle,[[537]] not to any one’s advantage or particular credit, and to his own dire tribulation. Bowles is one of those not uninteresting people, in all divisions of history, who, absolutely rather null, have not inconsiderable relative importance. The influence of his early sonnets on Coleridge, and through Coleridge on the whole Romantic revival in England, is well known, and not really surprising. In the remainder of his long and on the whole blameless life, he committed a great deal of verse which, though not exactly bad, is utterly undistinguished and unimportant. His theory of poetry, however, though somewhat one-sided, was better than his practice: and it was rather as a result of that dangerous thing Reaction, and from a lack of alertness and catholicity, than from positive heresy, that he fell foul of Pope. In his edition he laid down, and in the controversy following he defended,[[538]] certain “invariable principles of Poetry,” of which the first and foremost was that images, thoughts, &c., derived from Nature and Passion, are always more sublime and pathetic than those drawn from Art and Manners. And it was chiefly on this ground that he, of course following his leader Warton, but using newer material and tactics, disabled, partially or wholly, the claims of Pope. Hereupon arose a hubbub. Campbell in the Specimens[[539]] took a hand; Byron wrote a Letter to John Murray[[540]] in defence of his favourite, and in ridicule of Bowles; auxiliaries and adversaries ran up on both sides. Whether Bowles was most happy or unhappy in the turmoil I am unable to say, but he was certainly put in a great state of agitation, and showered Pamphlets with elaborate titles, which one may duly find, with their occasions and rejoinders, in the library of the British Museum. At last dust settled on the conflict, which, however, is itself not quite settled to the present day, and in fact never can be, because it depends on one of the root differences of poetical taste. However, it probably helped the wiser sort to take the via media, even such a Romantic as Hazlitt vindicating Pope’s possession of “the poetical point of view,” and did, for the same sort, a service to the general history of criticism by emphasising the above-mentioned difference. Bowles himself, if he had been less fussy, less verbose, less given to “duply and quadruply” on small controversial points, and more a man of the world and of humour, might not have made by any means a bad critic. As it was, he was right in the main.
Byron.
We must, however, I suppose, say something, if only in this connection, of Byron as a critic. I do not think it necessary to say very much; and I shall not, as I could most easily do, concatenate here the innumerable contradictions of critical opinion in his Letters, which show that they were mere flashes of the moment, connected not merely by no critical theory but by no critical taste of any consistency, flings, “half-bricks” directed at dog or devil or divinity, according to the mood in which the “noble poet” chose to find himself. The Letter to Murray, &c. Let us confine ourselves to that unquestionably remarkable Letter to John Murray on Bowles and Pope, which is admittedly his critical diploma-piece. There are of course very good things in it. Byron was a genius; and your genius will say genial things now and then, whatsoever subject he happens to be treating. But he cannot in the very least maintain himself at the critical point: he is like the ball in the fountain, mounting now and then gloriously on the summit of the column and catching the rays that it attracts and reflects, much more often lying wallowing in the basin. Never was such critical floundering. He blasphemes at one moment the “invariable principles of poetry,” about which the amiable but somewhat ineffectual Bowles prated; he affirms them at the next, by finding in his way, and blindly picking up, the secret of secrets, that the poet who executes best is the highest, whatsoever his department; and he makes his affirmation valueless, by saying, almost before we have turned the page, that Lucretius is ruined by his ethics, and Pope saved by them. Even setting ethic against ethic, the proposition is at least disputable: but what on earth has Ethic to do with Execution, except that they both occur in the dictionary under E? There are other excellent things in the letter, and yet others the reverse of excellent; but I have not the least intention here of setting up a balance-sheet after the manner of Robinson Crusoe, of ranging Byron’s undoubtedly true, though not novel, vindication of the human element as invariably necessary to poetry, against his opinion of Shelley, and of Keats, and of the English poetry of his greatest contemporaries generally, as “all Claudian,” and against the implied estimate of Claudian himself. This would be a confusion like his own, a parallel ignoratio elenchi, a fallacia a fallacioribus. Suffice it to say, that to take him seriously as a critic is impossible.[[541]]
Others: Isaac Disraeli.