for he has far outgone other competitors'. Dryden's plan is better chosen; history will always take stronger hold of the attention than fable: the passions excited by Dryden are the pleasures and pains of real life, the scene of 'Pope is laid in imaginary existence. Pope is read with calm acquiescence2, Dryden with turbulent delight; Pope hangs upon the ear, and Dryden finds the passes of the mind.

Both the odes want the essential constituent of metrical com- 321 positions, the stated recurrence of settled numbers. It may be alleged that Pindar is said by Horace to have written 'numeris lege solutis, but as no such lax performances have been transmitted to us, the meaning of that expression cannot be fixed; and perhaps the like return might properly be made to a modern Pindarist, as Mr. Cobb 5 received from Bentley, who, when he found his criticisms upon a Greek exercise, which Cobb had presented, refuted one after another by Pindar's authority, cried out at last, 'Pindar was a bold fellow, but thou art an impudent one.'

If Pope's Ode be particularly inspected it will be found that 322 the first stanza consists of sounds well chosen indeed, but only sounds.

The second consists of hyperbolical common-places, easily to 323

always have reverenced.' Spence's Anec. p. 158.

POPE,

Pope's Ode was written in 1708. Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), iv. 397. See also ib. vi. 387 for Steele's request to him in 1711 to write 'some words for music.'

'We have had in our language no other odes of the sublime kind than that of Dryden on St. Cecilia's Day. ... That of Pope is not worthy of so great a man.' GRAY, Mitford's Gray, i. 36.

'St. Cecilia's music-book is interlined with epigrams; and Alexander's Feast smells of gin at second-hand, with true Briton fiddlers full of native talent in the orchestra.' LANDOR, Imag. Conver. iv. 275.

I

For Odes for St. Cecilia's Day see ante, DRYDEN, 150, 279, 318; ADDISON, 128; HUGHES, 6; CONGREVE, 39. Yalden, in 1693, wrote an Ode which was set to music by Purcell. Biog. Brit. p. 4379.

be found, and perhaps without much difficulty to be as well expressed.

Had all been

324 In the third, however, there are numbers, images, harmony, and vigour, not unworthy the antagonist of Dryden. like this-but every part cannot be the best 1.

325

The next stanzas place and detain us in the dark and dismal regions of mythology 2, where neither hope nor fear, neither joy nor sorrow can be found: the poet however faithfully attends us; we have all that can be performed by elegance of diction or sweetness of versification; but what can form avail without better matter?

326 The last stanza recurs again to common-places 3. The conclusion is too evidently modelled by that of Dryden; and it may be remarked that both end with the same fault, the comparison of each is literal on one side, and metaphorical on the other *.

327

328

Poets do not always express their own thoughts; Pope, with all this labour in the praise of musick, was ignorant of its principles, and insensible of its effects 5.'

One of his greatest though of his earliest works is the Essay on Criticism, which if he had written nothing else would have placed him among the first criticks and the first poets, as it exhibits every mode of excellence that can embellish or dignify I didactick composition, selection of matter, novelty of arrange

' Johnson says that the best line in the poem is the eighth in this stanza: 'Transported demi-gods stood round, And men grew heroes at the sound.' Works, vi. 40.

Ante, BUTLER, 41.

3 Criticism disdains to chase a schoolboy to his common-places.' Post, GRAY, 34.

* Ante, DRYDEN, 280, 320.
'So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall de-
vour,

The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And music shall untune the sky.'

DRYDEN. 'Of Orpheus now no more let Poets tell,

To bright Cecilia greater power is
giv'n;

His numbers rais'd a shade from hell,
Hers lift the soul to heav'n.'

5 Hawkins gives the Ode as altered by Pope at the request of Maurice Greene, who set it to music. Hawkins adds:-'Pope once said:-"Dr. Arbuthnot speaks strongly of the effect that music has on his mind, and I believe him; but I own myself incapable of any pleasure from it."' History of Music, v. 328, 414.

'The Duchess of Queensberry told me that Gay could play on the flute, and that this enabled him to adapt so happily some airs in The Beggar's Opera. WARTON, Essay, i. 203.

'Wyndham said that four of the greatest men he knew had no relish for music-Burke, Fox, Johnson and Pitt. To these we may add Pope, and in our own time Southey and O'Connell.' Corres. of Southey and C. Bowles, p. 245 n. See also John. Misc. ii. 103 n. 6 Ante, POPE, 34.

POPE.

POPE

229

ment, justness of precept, splendour of illustration, and propriety
of digression. I know not whether it be pleasing to consider
that he produced this piece at twenty, and never afterwards
excelled it he that delights himself with observing that such
powers may be so soon attained, cannot but grieve to think that
life was ever after at a stand.

To mention the particular beauties of the Essay would be 829
unprofitably tedious; but I cannot forbear to observe that the
comparison of a student's progress in the sciences with the
journey of a traveller in the Alps is perhaps the best that
English poetry can shew 3. A simile, to be perfect, must both
illustrate and ennoble the subject; must shew it to the under-
standing in a clearer view, and display it to the fancy with
greater dignity: but either of these qualities may be sufficient
In didactick poetry, of which the great
to recommend it.
purpose is instruction, a simile may be praised which illustrates,
though it does not ennoble; in heroicks, that may be admitted
which ennobles, though it does not illustrate. That it may be
complete it is required to exhibit, independently of its references,
a pleasing image; for a simile is said to be a short episode.
so attentive that circumstances were
To this antiquity was

1 Addison wrote of it:-'As for those observations which are the most known and the most received, they are placed in so beautiful a light, and illustrated with such apt allusions, that they have in them all the graces of novelty, and make the reader who was before acquainted with them still more convinced of their truth and solidity.' Spectator, No. 253.

on

For the varying judgements passed

the Essay, see Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), v. 45.

'At

2 Johnson calls it 'the stupendous
performance of a youth not yet twenty
Works, vi. 41.
years old.'
whatever period the poem was first
written it did not appear till May,
1711, and represents the capacity of
Pope at twenty-three.' Pope's Works
(Elwin and Courthope), ii. 11.

Warton points out that in it there
is no mention of Milton. Warton,
i. 280.

3 Fir'd at first sight with what the
Muse imparts,

In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts,

While from the bounded level of our mind

Short views we take, nor see the

lengths behind;

But more advanc'd, behold with strange surprise

New distant scenes of endless
science rise!

So pleas'd at first the tow'ring
Alps we try,

Mount o'er the vales, and seem to
tread the sky,

Th' eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:

But, those attain'd, we tremble to survey

The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,

Th' increasing prospect tires our
wand'ring eyes,

Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on
Alps arise.'

Essay on Criticism, ll. 219–32.

sometimes added which, having no parallels, served only to fill the imagination, nd produced what Perrault ludicrously called 'comparisons with a long tail. In their similes the greatest writers have sometimes failed: the ship-race, compared with the chariot-race, is neither illustrated nor aggrandised; land and water make all the difference: when Apollo running after Daphne is likened to a greyhound chasing a hare, there is nothing gained; the ideas of pursuit and flight are too plain to be made plainer, and a god and the daughter of a god are not represented much to their advantage by a hare and dog 3. The simile of the Alps has no useless parts, yet affords a striking picture by itself: it makes the foregoing position better understood, and enables it to take faster hold on the attention; it assists the apprehension, and elevates the fancy.

330 Let me likewise dwell a little on the celebrated paragraph, in which it is directed that 'the sound should seem an echo to the sense'; a precept which Pope is allowed to have observed beyond any other English poet.

331 This notion of representative metre, and the desire of discovering frequent adaptations of the sound to the sense, have produced, in my opinion, many wild conceits and imaginary beauties 5. All that can furnish this representation are the sounds of the words considered singly, and the time in which they are pronounced. Every language has some words framed

Addison censures Perrault as 'a man of vitiated relish,' who 'for that very reason has endeavoured to turn into ridicule several of Homer's similitudes, which he calls "comparaisons à longue queue," long-tailed comparisons.' The Spectator, No. 303. See Réflexions critiques, vi, Œuvres de Boileau, 1748, ii. 288.

2 VIRGIL, Aeneid, v. 144.
3 OVID, Meta. i. 533.
'Tis not enough no harshness
gives offence,

The sound must seem an echo to
the sense.'

Essay on Criticism, 1. 364.
Roscommon had said in his Essay
on Translated Verse:-
'The sound is still a comment to the
sense.'
Eng. Poets, xv. 90.
'I have followed the significance
of the numbers, and the adapting

them to the sense, much more even than Dryden.' POPE, Spence's Anec. p. 316.

In his Iliad, xiii. 1005, on the line:'Wide-rolling, foaming high, and tumbling to the shore,'

Pope says in a note:-'I have endeavoured to imitate the confusion and broken sound of the original [11. 798-9], which images the tumult and roaring of many waters.'

In his Iliad, xxiii. 18, he says of 11. 13-16 in the original:-'Every word has a melancholy cadence, and the Poet has not only made the sands and the arms, but even his very verse to lament with Achilles.' See also ante, COWLEY, 194.

5 Much of the criticism that follows is found in The Rambler, Nos. 92, 94.

to exhibit the noises which they express, as timp, rattle, growl, hiss'. These, however, are but few, and the pet cannot make them more, nor can they be of any use but when sound is to be mentioned. The time of pronunciation was in the dactylick measures of the learned languages capable of considerable variety; but that variety could be accommodated only to motion or duration, and different degrees of motion were perhaps expressed by verses rapid or slow, without much attention of the writer, when the image had full possession of his fancy: but our language having little flexibility our verses can differ very little in their cadence. The fancied resemblances, I fear, arise sometimes merely from the ambiguity of words; there is supposed to be some relation between a soft line and a soft couch, or between hard syllables and hard fortune.

Motion, however, may be in some sort exemplified; and yet 332 it may be suspected that even in such resemblances the mind often governs the ear, and the sounds are estimated by their meaning. One of the most successful attempts has been to describe the labour of Sisyphus :

'With many a weary step, and many a groan,

Up a [the] high hill he heaves a huge round stone;
The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,
Thunders impetuous down, and smoaks along the ground".'
Who does not perceive the stone to move slowly upward, and
roll violently back? But set the same numbers to another sense;
'While many a merry tale, and many a song,

Chear'd the rough road, we wish'd the rough road long3.
The rough road then, returning in a round,

Mock'd our impatient steps, for all was fairy ground".'

'Such are stridor, balo, and beatus in Latin; and in English to growl, to buzz, to hiss, and to jar?' The Rambler, No. 94.

2 These lines come in a book translated by Broome. Ante, BROOME, 5. It would be interesting to see his version, before Pope (to use his own words) 'loaded the second verse with monosyllables.' Odyssey, xi. 736 n.

Addison, in The Spectator, No. 253, quoting the Greek, continues :'This double motion of the stone is admirably described in the numbers

of these verses; as in the four first
it is heaved up by several spondees,
intermixed with proper breathing-
places, and at last trundles down in
à continued line of dactyls.'

3 In the 1783 edition long is mis-
printed along.

Conington writes of Johnson's parody:-The numbers are not really the same. "Merry" has a much less tedious sound than "weary" the sense of panting occasioned by the five aspirates in Pope's second line is not analogous to anything in Johnson's; "thunders