thizing friend brings out a compliment, so exquisitely turned, as
to be a permanent title of honour, conferred by genius instead of power;
or the thought of his parents makes his voice tremble, and his eyes
shine with pathetic softness; and you forgive the occasional affectation
which you can never quite forget, or even the occasional grossness or
harshness of sentiment which contrasts so strongly with the superficial
polish. A genuine report of even the best conversation would be
intolerably prosy and unimaginative. But imagine the very pith and
essence of such talk brought to a focus, concentrated into the smallest
possible space with the infinite dexterity of a thoroughly trained hand,
and you have the kind of writing in which Pope is unrivalled; polished
prose with occasional gleams of genuine poetry--the epistle to Arbuthnot
and the epilogue to the Satires.

One point remains to be briefly noticed. The virtue on which Pope prided
himself was correctness; and I have interpreted this to mean the quality
which is gained by incessant labour, guided by quick feeling, and always
under the strict supervision of common sense. The next literary
revolution led to a depreciation of this quality. Warton (like Macaulay
long afterwards) argued that in a higher sense, the Elizabethan poets
were really as correct as Pope. Their poetry embodied a higher and more
complex law, though it neglected the narrow cut-and-dried precepts
recognized in the Queen Anne period. The new school came to express too
undiscriminating a contempt for the whole theory and practice of Pope
and his followers. Pope, said Cowper, and a thousand critics have echoed
his words,--

Made poetry a mere mechanic art
And every warbler had his tune by heart.

Without discussing the wider question, I may here briefly remark that
this judgment, taken absolutely, gives a very false impression of Pope's
artistic quality. Pope is undoubtedly monotonous. Except in one or two
lyrics, such as the Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, which must be reckoned
amongst his utter failures, he invariably employed the same metre. The
discontinuity of his style, and the strict rules which he adopted, tend
to disintegrate his poems. They are a series of brilliant passages,
often of brilliant couplets, stuck together in a conglomerate; and as
the inferior connecting matter decays, the interstices open and allow
the whole to fall into ruin. To read a series of such couplets,