XIII. The poets between Dryden and Pope, did little toward the advancement of English poetry. Although many of these were men of no mean capability, and met with merited honor in their day, their excellencies are not great enough to entitle them to a prominent place in a paper whose limits enforce selection. It is perhaps better for them that they are not admitted, as my applause even might, like paint on the brush of a bad artist, injure rather than assist. Let them pass then:—the odd and witty Prior; the melodious and animated Lansdown; the pointed Congreve; the elaborate and particular Addison; the penetrating Rowe; the easy and sweet Parnell—one and every one.
Alexander Pope, of a family at whose head was the Earl of Downe, lived fifty-five years, during the greater part of which time he was a distinguished contributor to his country's literature in pastoral, lyric and didactic poetry—and most of all in satire and translation. In noticing Cibber's parallel, I have already touched upon Pope's peculiar excellence—elegance.
It was said by Warburton in the early part of that strange career which ended in a steady friendship for Pope, that "Dryden borrowed from the ancients through want of leisure; Pope from want of genius," and on this latter, the enemies of the abused poet have harped severely. One prominent argument which they adduce is the seeming difficulty with which he wrote! "His polish," say they, "is but the labored polish of a common hand. There are none of the sudden and strong outbreaks of great genius. He piles his thoughts with the labor of an ant building its hill." They shew his manuscript, lined and interlined, corrected and re-corrected, until no eye can detect the real reading, and forget that Isocrates was engaged nine years on one short panegyric. It would strike me that Pope's numerous corrections evinced fertility of mind. That the constant aim toward excellence, was but the yearning of great genius after perfection. This yearning did not display itself in Dryden, to whom belonged even greater genius, for the simple reason that he had no leisure for it. He was Old Jacob Tonson's hack, and depended on his writings for subsistence, while Pope was the receiver of annuities which rendered him wholly independent. As a didactic writer, Pope stands conspicuous among the philosophic poets, not only of England, but of the world. Neither Virgil nor Lucretius can in this, boast superiority. And Akenside, Armstrong, and even Boileau, fall far beneath. I have remarked, that logic suited no order of poetry, except the satirical: I do not contradict myself here. Lucretius pleases us with his bold and original conceptions, no matter how faulty they are, Virgil, by the poetic elegance which he throws upon his disjointed philosophy. And Pope is the more pleasing for his want of method. Virgil's mode of reasoning is the most orderly and best arranged of the three, and consequently his didactic poems resemble more the Anglo-Latin treatises of the twelfth and following centuries, than those of the others do. In brief, sprightly carelesness of restraint, and want of method, render Pope's "Essay on Criticism," and the "De rerum natura" of Lucretius more agreeable to the reader than the best of Virgil's Georgics. In satire, Pope was superior to Dryden, chiefly I presume, in consequence of the latter's want of leisure to perfect the reasoning which enters so importantly into that species of composition. As a translator, he was unhappy in his choice of authors. Virgil would have suited his style of genius far better than Homer. His anglicized Greek lines wear too much frippery of dress. A happy mean yet remains to be filled, between the extreme polish of Pope's Homer, and the naked abruptness of both Chapman and Cowper. There was a degree of hypocrisy in Pope's mode of publishing his letters which should be censured. (Vide Quarrels of Authors.)
Pope perfected the music and elegance of the English verse. Drawn out of chaos by old Chaucer; softened by Spenser; twisted into pliancy by Surrey; subtilized by Cowley; smoothed by Waller; strongly and beautifully modelled by Dryden;—it still wanted the finishing touch, and this, Pope gave. But he was more than an accomplished linguist. A skilful satirist, a touching eulogist, a philosophic tutor, and in fine, in spite of bodily infirmities, a good and amiable man,20 his life was like the passage of a health-infusing river through the sands of the earth. Useful to all within reach of its influence; when the stream curdled in its bed, the loss was deeply felt. And although the poet's works remain among us, it is only as the cedar and palm remain upon the banks of the once living stream. "So good a man was he, his presence doubled their beauty."21
L. L.
20 I have been particular in noticing Pope's goodness of heart, because the devotees of Addison have spoken of him as "twisted in body and mind—as peevish as he was deformed."
21 Surgeons and critics love new subjects, and the latter have so raked up from the dunghills of the forgotten past, poets (God save the mark!) innumerable. To mention in this paper the names of one half would be bringing sad company to old Chaucer and his great successors; however, the other half is made up of no mean names. Lydgate, James I, of Scotland, Skelton, Gawin, Douglass, Lord Rochford, Lord Vaux, Gascoigne, Marlowe, Churchyard, Tuberville, Sir Walter Raleigh, Silvester, (translator of Du Bartal,) Fairfax, Beaumont and Fletcher, Chapman, Carew, Quarles, Drummond, Lovelace, (the cavalier and lover of Althea,) Herrick, Marvel, Cotton, Walton, Lee, Shadwell, and one or two others, I have passed over with regret.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.