earliest tears bestow,
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.

The more elaborate poetry of the _Eloisa_ is equally polished
throughout, and too much praise cannot easily be bestowed upon the skill
with which the romantic scenery of the convent is indicated in the
background, and the force with which Pope has given the revulsions of
feeling of his unfortunate heroine from earthly to heavenly love, and
from keen remorse to renewed gusts of overpowering passion. All this may
be said, and without opposing high critical authority. And yet, I must
also say, whether with or without authority, that I, at least, can read
the poems without the least "disposition to cry," and that a single
pathetic touch of Cowper or Wordsworth strikes incomparably deeper. And
if I seek for a reason, it seems to be simply that Pope never crosses
the undefinable, but yet ineffaceable, line which separates true poetry
from rhetoric. The Eloisa ends rather flatly by one of Pope's
characteristic aphorisms. "He best can paint them (the woes, that is, of
Eloisa) who shall feel them most;" and it is characteristic, by the way,
that even in these his most impassioned verses, the lines which one
remembers are of the same epigrammatic stamp, e.g.:

A heap of dust alone remains of thee,
'Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be!

I mourn the lover, not lament the fault.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot,
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

The worker in moral aphorisms cannot forget himself even in the full
swing of his fervid declamation. I have no doubt that Pope so far
exemplified his own doctrine that he truly felt whilst he was writing.
His feelings make him eloquent, but they do not enable him to "snatch a
grace beyond the reach of art," to blind us for a moment to the presence
of the consummate workman, judiciously blending his colours, heightening
his effects, and skilfully managing his transitions or consciously
introducing an abrupt outburst of a new mood. The smoothness of the
verses imposes monotony even upon the varying passions which are
supposed to struggle in Eloisa's breast. It is not merely our knowledge
that Pope is speaking dramatically which prevents us from receiving the
same kind of impressions as we receive from poetry--such, for example,
as some of Cowper's minor pieces--i