nal conduct, that
England is indebted more than she is to any other known influence for
her stupendous prosperity on two separate lines of progress: first, on
that of commercial enterprise; secondly, on that of political
improvement. At this moment there are two forces acting upon Christendom
which constitute the principles of movement all over Europe: these are,
the questions incident to representative government, and the mighty
interests combined by commercial enterprise. Both have radiated from
England as their centre. There only did the early models of either
activity prosper. Through North America, as the daughter of England,
these two forces have transplanted themselves to every principal region
(except one) of the vast Southern American continent. Thus, to push our
view no further, we behold one-half of the habitable globe henceforth
yoked to the two sole forces of _permanent_ movement for nations, since
war and religious contests are but intermitting forces; and these two
principles, we repeat, have grown to what we now behold chiefly through
the protection of this one great maxim which throws the hopes of the
world, not upon what the scheming understanding can suggest, but upon
what the most faithful experiment can prove.

_X. POPE AND DIDACTIC POETRY._

The 'Essay on Criticism' illustrates the same profound misconception of
the principle working at the root of Didactic Poetry as operated
originally to disturb the conduct of the 'Essay on Man' by its author,
and to disturb the judgments upon it by its critics. This 'Essay on
Criticism' no more aims at unfolding the grounds and theory of critical
rules applied to poetic composition, than does the _Epistola ad Pisones_
of Horace. But what if Horace and Pope both believed themselves the
professional expounders _ex cathedra_ of these very grounds and this
very theory? No matter if they did. Nobody was less likely to understand
their own purposes than themselves. Their real purposes were _immanent_,
hidden in their poems; and from the poems they must be sought, not from
the poets; who, generally, in proportion as the problem is one of
analysis and evolution, for which, simply as the authors of the work,
Horace and Pope were no better qualified than other people, and, as
authors having that particular constitution of intellect which
notoriously they had, were much worse qualified than other people. We
cannot possibly allow a man to argue upon the meaning or