member how many pages of
acute observation are required to set forth Bishop Blougram's peculiar
phase of worldliness, and then turn to Pope's descriptions of Addison,
or Wharton, or Buckingham. Each of those descriptions is, indeed, a
masterpiece in its way; the language is inimitably clear and pointed;
but the leading thought is obvious, and leads to no intricate problems.
Addison--assuming Pope's Addison to be the real Addison--might be
cold-blooded and jealous; but he had not worked out that elaborate
machinery for imposing upon himself and others which is required in a
more critical age. He wore a mask, but a mask of simple construction;
not one of those complex contrivances of modern invention which are so
like the real skin that it requires the acuteness and patience of a
scientific observer to detect the difference and point out the nature of
the deception. The moral difference between an Addison and a Blougram
is as great as the difference between an old stage-coach and a
steam-engine, or between the bulls and bears which first received the
name in Law's time and their descendants on the New York Stock Exchange.

If, therefore, Pope gains something in clearness and brilliancy by the
comparative simplicity of his art, he loses by the extreme obviousness
of its results. We cannot give him credit for being really moved by such
platitudes. We have the same feeling as when a modern preacher employs
twenty minutes in proving that it is wrong to worship idols of wood and
stone. But, unfortunately, there is a reason more peculiar to Pope which
damps our sympathy still more decidedly. Recent investigations have
strengthened those suspicions of his honesty which were common even
amongst his contemporaries. Mr. Elwin was (very excusably) disgusted by
the revelations of his hero's baseness, till his indignation became a
painful burden to himself and his readers. Speaking bluntly, indeed, we
admit that lying is a vice, and that Pope was in a small way one of the
most consummate liars that ever lived. He speaks himself of
'equivocating pretty genteelly' in regard to one of his peccadilloes.
Pope's equivocation is to the equivocation of ordinary men what a
tropical fern is to the stunted representatives of the same species in
England. It grows until the fowls of the air can rest on its branches.
His mendacity in short amounts to a monomania. That a man with intensely
irritable nerves, and so fragile in constitution that his lif