“And not a vanity is given in vain.”
“Would ye be blest? despise low joys, low gains,
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains,
Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains.”
[14.] Pope is the foremost literary figure of his age and century; and he is also the head of a school. He brought to perfection a style of writing verse which was followed by hundreds of clever writers. Cowper says of him:—
“But Pope—his musical finesse was such,
So nice his ear, so delicate his touch,—
Made poetry a mere mechanic art,
And every warbler has his tune by heart.”
Pope was not the poet of nature or of humanity; he was the poet of “the town,” and of the Court. He was greatly influenced by the neatness and polish of French verse; and, from his boyhood, his great ambition was to be “a correct poet.” He worked and worked, polished and polished, until each idea had received at his hands its very neatest and most epigrammatic expression. In the art of condensed, compact, pointed, and yet harmonious and flowing verse, Pope has no equal. But, as a vehicle for poetry—for the love and sympathy with nature and man which every true poet must feel, Pope’s verse is artificial; and its style of expression has now died out. It was one of the chief missions of Wordsworth to drive the Popian second-hand vocabulary out of existence.