The limitations imposed by such a condition are obvious. As men of
taste, Pope's friends would make their bow to the recognized
authorities. They would praise _Paradise Lost_, but a new Milton would
be as much out of place with them as the real Milton at the court of
Charles II. They would really prefer to have his verses tagged by
Dryden, or the Samson polished by Pope. They would have ridiculed
Wordsworth's mysticism or Shelley's idealism, as they laughed at the
religious "enthusiasm" of Law or Wesley, or the metaphysical subtleties
of Berkeley and Hume. They preferred the philosophy of the Essay on Man,
which might be appropriated by a common-sense preacher, or the rhetoric
of _Eloisa and Abelard_, bits of which might be used to excellent effect
(as indeed Pope himself used the peroration) by a fine gentleman
addressing his gallantry to a contemporary Sappho. It is only too easy
to expose their shallowness, and therefore to overlook what was genuine
in their feelings. After all, Pope's eminent friends were no mere
tailor's blocks for the display of laced coats. Swift and Bolingbroke
were not enthusiasts nor philosophers, but certainly they were no fools.
They liked in the first place thorough polish. They could appreciate a
perfectly turned phrase, an epigram which concentrated into a couplet a
volume of quick observations, a smart saying from Rochefoucauld or La
Bruyere, which gave an edge to worldly wisdom; a really brilliant
utterance of one of those maxims, half true and not over profound, but
still presenting one aspect of life as they saw it, which have since
grown rather threadbare. This sort of moralizing, which is the staple of
Pope's epistles upon the ruling passion or upon avarice, strikes us now
as unpleasantly obvious. We have got beyond it and want some more
refined analysis and more complex psychology. Take, for example, Pope's
epistle to Bathurst, which was in hand for two years, and is just 400
lines in length. The simplicity of the remarks is almost comic. Nobody
wants to be told now that bribery is facilitated by modern system of
credit.

Blest paper-credit! last and best supply
That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!

This triteness blinds us to the singular felicity with which the
observations have been verified, a felicity which makes many of the
phrases still proverbial. The mark is so plain that we do scant justice
to the accuracy and precision with which it is hit. Yet when w