was weak enough to indulge an ambition for distinguished acquaintance, and a most effeminate caprice swayed his attachments and enmities. Another prominent trait increased his resemblance to the female sex. I allude to a quality which the phrenologists call secretiveness. In its healthy exercise its operation is invaluable. To its influence is ascribed much of that address and tact, in which women are so superior to men. The latter, in ordinary affairs, generally adopt a very direct course. They confide in strength rather than policy. They overlook lesser means in the contemplation of larger ends. This, indeed, is partly owing to their position. Nature always gives additional resources where the relation is that of the pursued rather than the pursuer. Hence, the insight into character, the talent for observation, the skill in tracing motives and anticipating results, which belong to wo. men. It is the abuse, however, of this trait that is obvious in Pope. There seems little question that he was an artful man. He made use of the most unnecessary stra. tagems to compass a simple favor. His cunning, indeed, was chiefly directed to the acquisition of fame; but nothing subtracts more from our sense of reputation, than a conviction that it is an exclusive end to its possessor. Truly great men never trouble themselves about their fame. They press bravely on in the path of honor and leave their renown to take care of itself. It succeeds as certainly as any law of nature. All elevated spirits have a calm confidence in this truth. Washington felt it in the darkest hour of the revolution, and Shakespeare unconsciously realized it, when he concluded his last play, 6 and went quietly down to finish his days in the country. Pope was a gifted mortal, but he was not of this calibre. He thought a great deal about his reputation. He was not satisfied merely to labor for it, and leave the result. He disputed its possession inch by inch with the critics, and resorted to a thousand petty tricks to secure its enjoyment. The management he displayed in order to publish his letters, is an instance in point. No one can read them without feeling they were written for more eyes than those of his correspondents. There is a labored smartness, a constant exhibition of fine sentiment, which is strained and unnatural. His repeated deprecation of motives of aggrandizement, argues, a thinking too precisely' on the very subject; and no man, whose chief ambition was to gain a few dear friends, would so habitually proclaim it. These tender and delicate aspirations live in the secret places of the heart. They are breathed in lonely prayers, and uttered chiefly in quiet sighs. Scarcely do they obtain natural expression amid the details of a literary correspondence. True sentiment is modest. It may tinge the conversation and give a feeling tone to the epistle, but it makes not a confessional of every sentrybox, or gallery. The letters of Pope leave upon the mind an impression of affectation. Doubtless they contain much that is sincere in sentiment and candid in opinion, but the general effect lacks the freedom and heartíness of genuine letter-writing. Many of the bard's foibles should be ascribed to his bodily ailments, and the indulgence which he always commanded. Nor should we forget that he proved himself above literary servility and was, in many instances, a most faithful friend, and always an exemplary son. Pope was the poet of wit and fancy, rather than of enthusiasm and imagination. His invention is often brilliant, but never grand. He rarely excites any sentiment of sublimity, but often one of pleasure. There is little in his poetry that seems the off. spring of emotion. He never appears to have written from overpowering impulse. His finest verses have an air of premeditation. We are not swept away by a torrent of individual passion as in Byron, nor melted by a natural sentiment as in Burns, nor exalted by a grandeur of imagery as in Milton. We read Pope with a regular pulse. He often provokes a smile, but never calls forth a tear. His rationality approves itself to our understanding, his fancifulness excites our applause; but the citadel of the soul is uninvaded. We perceive, unawares perhaps, that books have quickened the bard's conception far more than experience. It may be fairly doubted whether Pope possessed, in any great degree, the true poetical sensibility to nature. He thought more of his own domains than becomes a true son of the muse, and had a most unpoetical regard for money, as well as contempt for poverty. His favorite objects of contemplation were Alex. ander Pope and Twickenham. We cannot wonder that he failed as an editor of Shakspeare. Few objects or scenes of the outward_world awoke feelings in his bosom "too deep for tears." He never claimed such fellowship with the elements as to fancy himself a portion of the tempest.' It is true he describes well; but where the materials of his pietures are not borrowed, they resemble in a authentic nomenclatures more than genial sketches. He does not personify nature with the ardor of a votary. He never follows with a lover's perception the phases of a natural phenomenon. The evening wind might have cooled his brow forever, ere he would have been prompted to trace its course with the grateful fondness of Bryant. He might have lived upon the sea-coast, and never revelled in its grandeur as did the Peer, and passed a daisy every day, nor felt the meek appeal of its lowly beauty, as did the Ploughman. Even in his letters, Pope depicts scenery with a very cool admiration; and never seems to associate it with any sentiment of moral interest. Where any thing of this appears, it is borrowed. [The taste of Pope was evidently artificial to the last degree.] He delighted in a grotto decked out with looking-glass and colored stones, as much as Wordsworth in a mountainpath, or Scott in a border antiquity.The Rape of the Lock is considered his most characteristic production, and abounds with brilliant fancy and striking invention. But to what is it devoted? The celebration of a trivial incident in fashionable life. Its inspiration is not of the grove, but the boudoir. It is not bright with the radiance of truth, but with the polish of art. It breathes not the fragrance of wild-flowers, but the fumes of tea. It displays not the simple features of nature, but the paraphernalia of the toilet. We know what the heroine wears and what she does, but must conjecture her peculiar sentiments, and make out of the details of her dress and circumstances, an idea of her character. POPE. On her white breast, a spark Faultless lines indeed, and the, ly; but the poet of feeling wo.. a view to other effuinstations and Imita s original pieces-a ... more of an art than ga, is truly an extraor silying, and of his most wholly in lan his description of Belinda's cha...de it may credit his gination would have carried us Li the bosom it adorned, to the you.. and made us leap on its pa poem is an extraordinary proof invented a long story out of a esting fact; and he has told this choice, and rhymes the most co the fruits and flowers of preciou site pietra dura tables of Italy combined, but unwarmed with : better calculated to awaken adr pathy. It is usual to speak of Pope : one whose peculiarities have giv of things. But we have ever repr both in literature and life. Men manners to an elegant degree of have become masters of an ( grace of which wins us from poets who have perfectly learned more sense than sensibility, me more fancy than imaginative pow disciples of Pope. They are use... lightful beings, and effect much in ur ty can be touched to finer issues I izing sun, Now revelation of o verse be couplets truly as emory clear ore! |