urse."

A happy commentary on the "feeding with spirits," and "filling with
vigour," as we would accept them. The rein provokes into action the
plenitude of life that else lies unused.

By the by, Gilbert Wakefield, not the happiest of critics in his services
to Pope, here rightly warns against the unskilful and indolent error of
apprehending from the word "like" a most inapt simile, which would explain
a horse by a horse, and exalt Pegasus by cutting off his wings. The words
are clearly to be understood, "like a generous horse--AS HE IS."

We have seen, then, instructed reader, that the poet begins giving advice
to the critic. Then he entangles for a moment the critic and poet
together. Then he discards the critic wholly, and takes the poet along
with him to the end. Do not forget, we beseech you, that there are, in the
soul of the poet, two great distinct powers. There is the primary creative
power, which, strong in love and passion and imagination, converses with
nature, draws thence its heaped intellectual wealth, and transmutes it all
into poetical substance. Then there is the great presiding power of
criticism, which sits in sovereignty, ruling the work of the poet engaged
in exercising his art. These two are confounded and confused by Pope once
and again. They are so, under the name of _Art_!--which, at first,
comprehends the two; and then suddenly means only the power of criticism
in the poet. Again, they shift place confusedly under the name
"_Wit_"--which at first means the creative power only--then, the critical
power only. Then, once more, the creative power only; in which sense it is
here at last opposed explicitly to judgment. The close is, under a fit and
gallant figure, a spirited description of the creative power firily
working under the control of criticism.

These deceiving interchanges run through a passage otherwise of great
lucidity and beauty, and of sterling strength and worth. Probably, most
attentive of readers, though possibly not the least perplexed, thou wilt
not rest with less satisfaction upon what is truly good in the passage,
now thou hast with us taken the trouble of detecting the slight disorder
which overshadows it. The possibility of the first confusion which slips
from the critic to the poet, attests the strength of the opinion in Pope's
mind, that the poet must entertain as an intellectual inmate a spirit of
criticism, as learned and severe as that of the mere critic. Perhaps the