rs, as
Johnson deemed them, and held that the want of breaks and of variety in
the pauses produced a monotony of sound. Lord Kames, on the contrary,
asserted that Pope was "eminent for variety of versification," and that
the variety of his pauses was the source of the "variety of his
melody."[19] I agree with the dissentients who think that his metre is
prone to a cloying mannerism, but I believe that the defect is ascribed
by Bowles to the wrong cause. Any one who compares the imperial march of
the metre in the Vanity of Human Wishes, with the sweet, but less
majestic Deserted Village, will perceive that the swell of the heroic
measure is capable of wide degrees. A poet judges of the harmony of his
verses by trying them on his ear, and the tendency is to set them all to
the same tune. This was Pope's error. He has in general, though not
always, intermixed the pauses, but he has not varied sufficiently the
swell and movement of his lines. Dryden, "in whose admirable ear," as
Gray remarks, "the music of our old versification still sounded,"[20]
rings the changes with wonderful ease and spirit, and is by turns soft
and stately, lively and solemn, familiar and sonorous, while he
preserves through all his transitions a freedom, a flow, and an
elasticity which never flag. His negligent lines, which are often
imputed to haste, have been thought by good writers to be intended to
avoid the surfeit of an equable strain. "Sometimes," says Dr. Trapp, "it
is not only allowable, but beautiful, to run into harsh and unequal
numbers. Mr. Dryden himself does it; and we may be sure he knew when he
did it as well as we could tell him. In a work intended for pleasure,
variety justifies the breach of almost any rule, provided it be done but
rarely."[21] There is extreme exaggeration in the language of Bowles
when he states that Pope "gave the first idea of mellifluence." Lines as
melodious may be counted in Dryden by the hundred. Pope only maintained
a more continuous softness, or, as Johnson puts it, "he discovered, by
perusing the works of Dryden, the most perfect fabric of English verse,
and habituated himself to that only which he found the best."[22] This
constantly recurring note, however attractive in itself, must always
appear a retrograde system, to those who appreciate the richer music of
more diversified modulations. The sameness of Pope's metre was the
reason that "every warbler had his tune by heart," and imitated it so
readily