Six Centuries of English Poetry Part 22

Lowell says: "Gray, if we may believe the commentators, has not an idea, scarcely an epithet, that he can call his own, and yet he is, in the best sense, one of the cla.s.sics of English literature."

And Sir James Mackintosh says: "Of all English poets he was the most finished artist. He attained the highest degree of splendor of which poetic style seemed to be capable. It may be added that he deserves the comparatively trifling praise of having been the most learned poet since Milton."

=Other Poems to be Read:= Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard; On a Distant Prospect of Eton College; The Progress of Poesy; Ode on Spring.

REFERENCES: Johnson's _Lives of English Poets_; _Gray_ (English Men of Letters), by Edmund Gosse; Hazlitt's _Lectures on the English Poets_; Roscoe's _Essays_.

Alexander Pope.

FROM THE "ESSAY ON CRITICISM."

Some to Conceit{1} alone their taste confine, And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line; Pleas'd with a work where nothing's just or fit;{2} One glaring Chaos and wild heap of wit.{3} Poets, like painters, thus, unskill'd to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part, And hide with ornaments their want of art.

True wit is nature to advantage dress'd; What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;{4} Something, whose truth convinc'd at sight we find, That gives us back the image of our mind.

As shades more sweetly recommend the light, So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.

For works may have more wit than does 'em good, As bodies perish through excess of blood.

Others for Language all their care express, And value books, as women men,{5} for dress: Their praise is still,--the style is excellent; The sense, they humbly take upon content.{6} Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found: False eloquence, like the prismatic gla.s.s, In gaudy colors spreads on ev'ry place; The face of nature we no more survey, All glares alike, without distinction gay: But true expression, like th' unchanging sun, Clears and improves whate'er it s.h.i.+nes upon; It gilds all objects, but it alters none.

Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent, as more suitable; A vile conceit in pompous words express'd Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd: For diff'rent styles with diff'rent subjects sort,{7} As sev'ral garbs with country, town, and court.

Some by old words to fame have made pretence, Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense; Such labor'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile, Unlucky, as Fungoso{8} in the play, These sparks{9} with awkward vanity display What the fine gentleman wore yesterday; And but so mimic ancient wits at best, As apes our grandsires, in their doublets drest.

In words, as fas.h.i.+ons, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new or old: Be not the first by whom the new are try'd, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

But most by numbers judge a poet's song, And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong: In the bright muse, tho' thousand charms conspire, Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire; Who haunt Parna.s.sus{10} but to please their ear, Not mend{11} their minds, as some to church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music there.

These equal syllables alone require, Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire;{12} While expletives their feeble aid do join; And ten low words oft creep in one dull line: While they ring round the same unvaried chimes, With sure returns of still expected rhymes; Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze,"

In the next line, it "whispers through the trees":{13} If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"

The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with "sleep": Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song,{14} That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.{15} Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know What's roundly smooth, or languis.h.i.+ngly slow; And praise the easy vigor of a line, Where Denham's strength and Waller's{16} sweetness join.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.

'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense: Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers{17} flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding sh.o.r.e, The hoa.r.s.e, rough verse should like the torrent roar: When Ajax{18} strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labors, and the words move slow: Not so, when swift Camilla{19} scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.

Hear how Timotheus'{20} vary'd lays surprise, And bid alternate pa.s.sions fall and rise!

While at each change, the son of Libyan Jove{21} Now burns with glory, and then melts with love; Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow, Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow: Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found, And the world's victor stood subdu'd by sound!

The power of music all our hearts allow, And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.

Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such, Who still are pleas'd too little or too much.

At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence, That always shows great pride, or little sense: Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best, Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest.

Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move; For fools admire, but men of sense approve: As things seem large which we through mists descry; Dulness is ever apt to magnify.

Some foreign writers, some our own despise; The ancients only, or the moderns prize.

Thus wit, like faith, by each man is apply'd To one small sect, and all are d.a.m.n'd beside.

Meanly they seek the blessing to confine, And force that sun but on a part to s.h.i.+ne, Which not alone the southern wit sublimes, But ripens spirits in cold northern climes; Which from the first has shone on ages past, Enlights the present, and shall warm the last; Tho' each may feel increases and decays, And see now clearer and now darker days.

Regard not, then, if wit be old or new, But blame the false, and value still the true.

Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own, But catch the spreading notion of the Town; They reason and conclude by precedent, And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent.

Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.

Of all this servile herd, the worst is he That in proud dulness joins with Quality.{22} A constant critic at the great man's board, To fetch and carry nonsense for my Lord.

What woful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starv'd hackney sonneteer, or me?

But let a Lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! how the style refines!

Before his sacred name flies ev'ry fault, And each exalted stanza teems with thought!

NOTES.

Pope's "Essay on Criticism" was published in 1711. It consists of 724 lines, and is written in heroic couplets--that style of poetic composition in which Pope excelled all others. It is full of sound critical precepts, put together with considerable art, and expressed in a manner which, at the time of its production, insured the popularity of the poem and the fame of its author. It was probably suggested by Boileau's "Art Poetique," which was founded on Horace's "Ars Poetica,"

and it in turn on Aristotle's rules, very commonly known among the cla.s.sical poets. "The Essay," says De Quincey, "is a collection of independent maxims tied together into a fasciculus by the printer, but having no natural order or logical dependence; generally so vague as to mean nothing. And, what is remarkable, many of the rules are violated by no man so often as by Pope, and by Pope nowhere so often as in this poem."

1. =Conceit.= Affected wit. "Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty; it is not only needless but impairs what it would improve."--_Pope._

2. =fit.= Proper. "Fit audience find, though few" (Milton, "Paradise Lost," V, 7).

3. =wit.= This is a favorite word with Pope, and is used by him to indicate a variety of ideas,--such as thought, knowledge, imagination, expression, the exercise of humor, etc. In this poem there are no fewer than twelve couplets rhyming to it.

4. "It requires very little reading of the French text-books to find the maxims which Pope has strung together in this poem, but he has dressed them so neatly, and turned them out with such sparkle and point, that these truisms have acquired a weight not their own, and they circulate as proverbs among us in virtue of their pithy form rather than their truth. They exemplify his own line, 'What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.' Pope told Spence that he had gone through all the best critics, specifying Quintilian, Rapin, and Le Bossu. But whatever trouble he took in collecting what to say, his main effort is expended upon how to say it."--_Pattison._

5. =as women men.= "As women value men," or "as women by men are valued"--which?

6. =humbly take upon content.= Are satisfied to take in faith.

7. =sort.= Agree.

8. =Fungoso.= A character in Ben Jonson's comedy, "Every Man in his Humour."

9. =sparks.= Fops; vain, showy men.

10. =Parna.s.sus.= A mountain in h.e.l.las, the chief seat of Apollo and the Muses. Hence, figuratively, a resort of the poets.

11. =mend.= Improve, make better, amend.

"Mend your speech a little Lest it may mar your fortunes."

--_Shakespeare_, _King Lear_, Act i, sc. i.

12. "The gaping of the vowels in this line, the expletive _do_ in the next, and the ten monosyllables in that which follows, give such a beauty to this pa.s.sage as would have been very much admired in an ancient poet."--_Addison._

13. Pope himself is not disinclined to make use of these rhymes. See "Essay on Man," 271.

"Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees."

14. Referring to the Spenserian stanza which is composed of nine lines, eight of which are iambic pentameters, and the ninth a hexameter or Alexandrine. The name Alexandrine is said to have been derived from an old French poem on Alexander the Great, written about the twelfth or thirteenth century, and composed entirely of hexameter verses. See note on the versification of the "Faerie Queene," page 234.

15. Observe the skill with which, both in this line and in several which precede and follow, the poet has made "the sound to seem an echo to the sense."

16. Waller had been regarded as the greatest poet of the seventeenth century (see page 205), and Denham, in the time of Pope, was more esteemed than Milton or Spenser. Dryden called Denham

"That limping old bard Whose fame on 'The Sophy' and 'Cooper's Hill' stands."

17. =numbers.= Poetical metre.