Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 002.djvu/704

we mean by a great poet one who gives the utmost grandeur to our conceptions of nature, and the utmost force to the passions of the heart, Pope was not, in this sense, a great poet; for the characteristic power of his mind lay directly the contrary way. Pope was, in a word, the poet, not of nature, but of art. Mr Hazlitt went on to describe the distinction between these two. The poet of nature, said he, is one who, from the elements of beauty, of power, and of passion, in his own breast, sympathizes with these qualities wherever they appear in nature; the truth, and depth, and harmony, of his own mind, enable him to hold communion with the very soul of nature, and to foreknow and record the feelings of all men under all circumstances, as they are affected by the same impressions; in short, to exert the same power over the minds of his readers as nature does. He sees things in their eternal beauty, for he sees them as they are; he feels them in their universal interest, for he feels them as they affect the immutable principles of his and our common nature. He appeals to the mind and senses as nature itself appeals to them; because the power of the imagination in him is the representative power of all nature.—Pope, continued Mr H., was assuredly not a poet of this class. He saw nature only as she was dressed by art. Fashion was his standard of beauty, and opinion his test of truth.

Pope had no instinctive sympathy with the feelings of mankind in general, but he knew well all that he himself loved or hated. His muse took no daring flights "from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;" she never wandered with safety but from his library to the grotto, and from his grotto back again to his library. To him his own garden was better than the garden of Eden; he could describe the mirror that reflected his own person better than the smooth surface of the lake that reflects the face of heaven; that which was nearest to him was greatest. He preferred the artificial to the natural in external objects, because he could sympathize better with the self-love of one, than with the love of that which was interesting to all. He preferred the artificial to the natural in passion, because the one bore him away with a force with which he could not grapple; while with the other he could toy and trifle, reject or entertain, as he pleased: it amused his fancy, and exercised his ingenuity, without disturbing his vanity, his levity, or indifference. His power lay in diminishing objects, rather than aggrandizing them; in checking enthusiasm, rather than creating it; in sneering at fancy and passion, rather than in giving loose to them: he could describe a row of pins and needles better than the embattled spears of Greeks and Trojans. Pope was the poet of private life. In his verse we meet with no prodigies of nature, but with miracles of wit;—the thunders of his pen are whispered flatteries,—his forked lightnings pointed sarcasms;—for rocks, and seas, and mountains, we have grass plots, and gravel walks, and tinkling rills;—for the war of the elements and the strife of the passions, we have "calm contemplation and poetic ease.' Yet within this narrow circle he gives to every thing a new interest and importance. It is like looking at the world through a microscope, the little becomes great, the deformed beautiful, and (it must be confessed) the beautiful deformed. It is true the wrong end of the magnifier is held to every thing; but yet the exhibition is highly curious.—Mr Hazlitt now proceeded to illustrate what he had said, by referring to particular instances in the works of Pope. He spoke of the Rape of the Lock as the best of these, and described it as a piece of beautiful fillagree work. As the Rape of the Lock is the perfection of wit and fancy, so the Essay on Criticism is of wit and sense. He described this last as containing a quantity of thought and observation that was wonderful in so young a man; unless, continued the Lecturer, we adopt the opinion, that most men of genius spend the rest of their lives in teaching others what they themselves have learnt under twenty. He said, that though the critical rules laid down in the essay were too much those of a school, and that not a good one, yet the general remarks and illustrations were eminently original and happy. After giving quotations from this work, Mr H. spoke of the Eloisa as one exception, and the only one, to the foregoing remarks. He described it as a piece of fine high-wrought eloquence, but not more impressive than the original letters on which it is founded.