But it would be too long a task
for this situation, and it would be too polemic. It would move through a
jungle of controversies.... Instead of this I prefer, as more amusing,
as less elaborate, and as briefer, to expose a few of Pope's _personal_
falsehoods, and falsehoods as to the notorieties of _fact_. Truth
speculative often-times, drives its roots into depth, so dark that the
falsifications to which it is liable, though detected, cannot always be
exposed to the light of day--the result is known, but not therefore
seen. Truth personal, on the other hand, may easily be made to confront
its falsifier, not with reputation only, but with the visible _shame_ of
refutation. Such shame would settle upon _every_ page of Pope's satires
and moral epistles, oftentimes upon every couplet, if any censor, armed
with an adequate knowledge of the facts, were to prosecute the inquest.
And the general impression from such an inquest would be, that Pope
never delineated a character, nor uttered a sentiment, nor breathed an
aspiration, which he would not willingly have recast, have retracted,
have abjured or trampled underfoot with the curses assigned to heresy,
if by such an act he could have added a hue of brilliancy to his
colouring or a new depth to his shadows. There is nothing he would not
have sacrificed, not the most solemn of his opinions, nor the most
pathetic memorial from his personal experience, in return for a
sufficient consideration, which consideration meant always with _him_
poetic effect. It is not, as too commonly is believed, that he was
reckless of other people's feelings; so far from _that_, he had a morbid
_facility_ in his kindness; and in cases where he had no reason to
suspect any lurking hostility, he showed even a paralytic benignity.
But, simply and constitutionally, he was incapable of a sincere thought
or a sincere emotion. Nothing that ever he uttered, were it even a
prayer to God, but he had a fancy for reading it backwards. And he was
evermore false, not as loving or preferring falsehood, but as one who
could not in his heart perceive much real difference between what people
affected to call falsehood, and what they affected to call truth.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Famous Reviews, by Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

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