| | | Whom shall we pronounce a fit writer to be laid before an auditory of | working-men, as a model of what is just in composition ~~ fit either | for conciliating their regard to literature at first or afterwards for | sustaining it? The qualifications for such a writer are apparently | these two; first, that he should deal chiefly with the elder and | elementary affections of man, and under those relations which concern | man's grandest capacities; secondly, that he should treat his subject | with solemnity, and not with sneer ~~ with earnestness, as one under a | prophet's burden of impassioned truth, and not with the levity of a | girl hunting a chance-started caprice. I admire Pope in the very | highest degree; but I admire him as a pyrotechnic artist for producing | brilliant and evanescent effects out of elements that have hardly a | moment's life within them. There is a flash and a startling explosion, | then there is a dazzling coruscation, all purple and gold; the eye | aches under the suddenness of a display that, springing like a burning | arrow out of darkness, rushes back into the darkness with arrowy speed, | and in a moment is all over. Like festal shows, or the hurrying music | of such shows ~~ | Untruly, therefore, was it ever fancied of Pope, that he | belonged by his classification to the family of the Drydens. Dryden had | within him a principle of continuity which was not satisfied without | lingering upon his own thoughts, brooding over them, and oftentimes | pursuing them through their unlinkings with the sequaciousness | (pardon a Coleridgian word) that belongs to some process of | creative nature, such as the unfolding of a flower. But Pope was all | jets and tongues of flame; all showers of scintillation and sparkle. | Dryden followed, genially, an impulse of his healthy nature. Pope | obeyed, spasmodically, an overmastering febrile paroxysm. Even in these | constitutional differences between the two are written and are legible | the corresponding necessities of

"utter falsehood in Pope, and of | loyalty to truth in Dryden."

Strange it is to recall this one | striking fact, that if once in his life Dryden might reasonably have | been suspected of falsehood, it was in the capital matter of religion. | He ratted from his Protestant faith; and according to the | literal origin of that figure he ratted ; for he abjured it | as rats abjure a ship in which their instinct of divination has | deciphered a destiny of ruin, and at the very | moment when Popery wore the promise of a triumph that might, at any | rate, have lasted his time. Dryden was a papist by apostacy; and | perhaps, not to speak uncharitably, upon some bias from self-interest. | Pope, on the other hand, was a Papist by birth, and by a tie of honour; | and he resisted all temptations to desert his afflicted faith, which | temptations lay in bribes of great magnitude prospectively, and in | persecutions for the present that were painfully humiliating. How base | a time-server does Dryden appear on the one side! on the other, how | much of a martyr should we be disposed to pronounce Pope! And yet, for | all that, such is the overruling force of a nature originally sincere, | the apostate Dryden wore upon his brow the grace of sincerity, whilst | the pseudo-martyr Pope, in the midst of actual fidelity to his church, | was at his heart a traitor ~~ in the very oath of his allegiance to his | spiritual mistress had a lie upon his lips, scoffed at her while | kneeling in homage to her pretensions, and secretly forswore her | doctrines while suffering insults in her service. | The differences as to truth and falsehood lay exactly where by all the | external symptoms they ought not to have lain. But the | reason for this | anomaly was that to Dryden sincerity had been a perpetual necessity of | his intellectual nature, whilst Pope, distracted by his own activities | of mind, living in an irreligious generation, and beset by infidel | friends, had early lost his anchorage of traditional belief; and yet, | upon honourable scruple of fidelity to the suffering Church of his | fathers, he sought often to dissemble the fact of his own scepticism, | which often he thirsted ostentatiously to parade. Through a motive of | truthfulness he became false. And in this particular instance he would, | at any rate, have become false, whatever had been the native | constitution of his mind. It was a mere impossibility to reconcile any | real allegiance to his church with his known irreverence to religion. | But upon far more subjects than this Pope was habitually false to the | quality of his thoughts, always insincere, never by any accident in | earnest, and consequently many times caught in ruinous | self-contradiction. Is that the sort of writer to furnish an | advantageous study for the precious leisure, precious as rubies, of the | toil-worn artisan. | The root and pledge of this falseness in Pope lay in a disease of his | mind, which he (like the Roman poet Horace) mistook for a feature of | praeter-natural strength; and this disease was the incapacity of | self-determination towards any paramount or abiding principles | . Horace, in a well-known passage, had congratulated himself upon | this disease as upon a trophy of philosophical emancipation: | | which words Pope translates, and applies to himself in his | English adaptation of this epistle ~~ | That is, neither one poet nor the other having, as regarded philosophy, | any internal principle of gravitation or determining impulse to draw | him in one direction rather than another, was left to the random | control of momentary taste, accident, or caprice; and this | indetermination of pure, | unballasted levity both Pope and Horace mistook for a special privilege | of philosophic strength. Others, it seems, were chained and coerced by | certain fixed aspects of truth, and their efforts were over-ruled | accordingly in one uniform line of direction. But they , the | two brilliant poets, fluttered on butterfly wings to the right and the | left, obeying no guidance but that of some instant and fugitive | sensibility to | some momentary phasis of beauty. In this dream of drunken eclecticism, | and in the original possibility of such an eclecticism, lay the ground | of that enormous falsehood which Pope practised from youth to age. An | eclectic philosopher already, in the very title which he assumes, | proclaims his self-complacency in the large liberty of error purchased | by the renunciation of all controlling principles. Having served the | towing-line which connected him with any external force of guiding and | compulsory truth, he is free to go astray in any one of ten thousand | false radiations from the true centre of rest. By his own choice he is | wandering in a forest all but pathless, | | and a forest not of sixty days' journey, like that old Hercynian | forest of Caesar's time, but a forest which sixty generations | have not availed to traverse or familiarise in any one direction.... | Here would be the most advantageous and remunerative | station to take for one who should undertake a formal exposure of | Pope's hollow-heartedness; that is, it would most commensurately reward | the pains and difficulties of such an investigation. But it would be | too long a task for this situation, and it would be too polemic. It | would move through a | jungle of controversies.... Instead of this I prefer, as more amusing, | as less elaborate, and as briefer, to expose a few of Pope's | personal falsehoods, and falsehoods as to the notorieties of | fact . Truth speculative often-times, drives its roots into depth, | so dark that the falsifications to which it is liable, though detected, | cannot always be | exposed to the light of day ~~ the result is known, but not therefore | seen. Truth personal, on the other hand, may easily be made to confront | its falsifier, not with reputation only, but with the visible | shame of refutation. Such shame would settle upon | every page of Pope's satires and moral epistles, oftentimes | upon every couplet, if any censor, armed | with an adequate knowledge of the facts, were to prosecute the inquest. | And the general impression from such an inquest would be, that Pope | never delineated a character, nor uttered a sentiment, nor breathed an | aspiration, which he would not willingly have recast, have retracted, | have abjured or trampled underfoot with the curses assigned to heresy, | if by such an act he could have added a hue of brilliancy to his | colouring or a new depth to his shadows. There is nothing he would not | have sacrificed, not the most solemn of his opinions, nor the most | pathetic memorial from his personal experience, in return for a | sufficient consideration, which consideration meant always with | him poetic effect. It is not, as too commonly is believed, that | he was reckless of other people's feelings; so far from that , | he had a morbid facility in his kindness; and in cases where | he had no reason to suspect any lurking hostility, he showed even a | paralytic benignity. | But, simply and constitutionally, he was incapable of a sincere thought | or a sincere emotion. Nothing that ever he uttered, were it even a | prayer to God, but he had a fancy for reading it backwards. And he was | evermore false, not as loving or preferring falsehood, but as one who | could not in his heart perceive much real difference between what | people affected to call falsehood, and what they affected to call truth.