5e94


FPOPE
By
Lytton, Strachey




OF THE


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POPE




CAMBRIDGE
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POPE


THE LESLIE STEPHEN
LECTURE FOR
I925


by
LYTTON STRACHEY


CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
I925




First Edition June 1925
Reprinted July 1925
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN




;~... -     POPE
AONG the considerations that might
At  make us rejoice or regret that we
did not live in the eighteenth century,
there is one that to my mind outbalances all the rest-if we had, we
might have known Pope. At any rate,
we have escaped that. We may lament
that flowered waistcoats are forbidden
us, that we shall never ride in a sedanchair, and that we shall never see good
Queen Anne taking tea at Hampton
Court: but we can at least congratulate
ourselves that we run no danger of
waking up one morning to find ourselves exposed, both now and for ever,
to the ridicule of the polite world-that
we are hanging by the neck, and kicking
our legs, on the elegant gibbet that has
been put up for us by the little monster
of Twit'nam, And, on the other hand,
as it is, we are in the happy position of
being able, quite imperturbably, to enjoy the fun. There is nothing so shame

SP


I




(2)
(   ) p2, l)rr
lessly selfish as posterity. To us, after
two centuries, the agoies suffered by
v the victims of Pope's naughtiness are a
matter of indifference; the fate of Pope's
own soul leaves us cold. We sit at our
ease, reading those Satires and Epistles,
in which the verses, when they were
written, resembled nothing so much as
spoonfuls of boiling oil, ladled out by a
fiendish monkey at an upstairs window
upon such of the passers-by whom the
wretch had a grudge against-and we
are delighted. We would not have it
otherwise: whatever is, is right.
In this there is nothing surprising;
but what does seem strange is that
Pope's contemporaries should have
borne with him as they did. His attacks
were by no means limited to Grub
Street. He fell upon great lords and
great ladies, duchesses and statesmen,
noble patrons and beautiful women of
fashion, with an equal ferocity; and
such persons, in those days, were very
well able to defend themselves. Iri




(3)
France, the fate suffered by Voltaire, at
chat very time, and on far less provocation, is enough to convince us that such
a portent as Pope would never have
been tolerated on the other side of the
Channel. The monkey would have been
whipped into silence and good manners
in double quick time. But in England
it was different. Here, though "the
Great," as they were called, were allpowerful, they preferred not to use
their power against a libellous rhymer,
who was physically incapable of protecting himself, and who, as a Roman
Catholic, lay particularly open to legal
pressure. The warfare between Pope
and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu illustrates the state of affairs. The origin of
their quarrel is uncertain. According to
the lady, it was caused by her bursting
into fits of laughter upon a declaration
of passion from the poet. Another and
perhaps more probable story traces the
origin of the discord to a pair of sheets,
borrowed by Lady Mary from old




(4)
Mrs Pope, the poet's mother, and re+
turned by her ladyship, after a fortnightl
unwashed. But whatever may have
been the hidden cause of the quarrel, its
results were obvious enough. Pope, in
one of his Imitations of Horace, made a
reference to "Sappho," whom all the
world knew to be Lady Mary, in a
couplet of extraordinary scurrility. Al-l
ways a master of the art of compression,
he asserted, in a single line of teri
syllables, that his enemy, besides being
a slanderous virago, was a debauched
woman afflicted with a disgraceful malady. If, after this, Lady Mary had sent
her friends or her footmen to inflict a.
personal chastisement upon the poet, or
if she had used her influence with the
government to have him brought to his
senses, nobody could have been very
much surprised. But she did nothing
of the sort. Instead, she consulted with
Lord Hervey, whom    Pope had alsc,
attacked, and the two together decided
to pay back their tormentor in his owd




( 5 )
coin. Accordingly they decocted and
published a lampoon, in which they did
their best to emulate both the style and
the substance of the poet.       "None,"
they declared,
thy crabbed numbers can endure,
Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure.
It shows, they said,
the Uniformity of Fate
That one so odious should be born to hate.
And if
LUnwhipt, unblanketed, unkick'd, unslain,
That wretched little carcase you retain,
The reason is, not that the world wants eyes,
But thou'rt so mean, they see and they despise.
After sixty lines of furious abuse, they
wound up with a shrug of the shoulders,
which was far from convincingYou strike unwounding, we unhurt can laugh,
they asserted. But for the unhurt this
was certainly very odd laughter. It was
also quite ineffective. Pope's first reply
xar:  a prose pamphlet, in which there
is, } least one amusing passage-"It is
e:rie  my Lord, I am     short, not well
s': ed, generally     ill-dressed, if not




(6)
sometimes dirty. Your Lordship and
Ladyship are still in bloom, your figures
such as rival the Apollo of Belvedere
and the Venus of Medicis, and your
faces so finished that neither sickness
nor passion can deprive them of colour."
But, of course, he reserved his most
poisonous shafts for his poetry. Henceforth, his readers might be sure that
in any especially unsavoury couplet the
name of Sappho would be found immortally embedded; while, as for Lord
Hervey, he met his final doom in the
character of Sporus-the most virulent
piece of invective in the English language.
Lady Mary and Lord Hervey, clever
as they were, had been so senseless as to
try to fight Pope on his own ground,
and, naturally enough, their failure was
dismal. But why had they committed
this act of folly? Their own explanation
was the exact reverse of the truth. Far
from despising the poet, they profoundly admired him. Hypnotised by




(7)
his greatness, they were unable to prevent themselves from paying him the
supreme compliment of an inept and
suicidal imitation. And in this they
were typical of the society in which they
lived. That society was perhaps the
most civilised that our history has
known. Never, at any rate, before or
since, has literature been so respected
in England. Prior wrote well, and He
became an ambassador. Addison wrote
well, and he was made a Secretary of
State. The Duke of Wharton gave
Young 2000o for having written a
poem on the Universal Passion. Alderman Barber's great ambition was to be
mentioned favourably by Pope. He let
it be understood that he would be willing to part with ~4000 if the poet
would gratify him; a single couplet was
all he asked for; but the Alderman
begged in vain. On the other hand,
Pope accepted ~Iooo from the old
Duchess of Marlborough in return for
tlie suppression of an attack upon the




( 8)
late Duke4 Pope cancelled the lines;
but soon afterwards printed an envenomed character of the Duchess. And
even the terrific Sarah herself-such was
the overwhelming prestige of the potentate of letters-was powerless in face of
this affront.
Wor the first time in our history, a
writer, who was a writer and nothing
more-Shakespeare was an actor and a
theatrical manager-had achieved financial independenceg Pope effected this
by his translation of Homer, which
brought him ~9000-a sum equivalent
to about ~30,000 to-day. The immense
success of this work was a sign of the
times. Homer's reputation was enormous: was he not the father of poetry?
The literary snobbery of the age was
profoundly impressed by that. Yes, it
was snobbery, no doubt; but surely it
was a noble snobbery which put Homer
so very high in the table of precedence
-probably immediately after the Archbishop of Canterbury. Yet, there were




(9)
difficulties. It was not only hard to read
Homer, it was positively dangerous.
Too close an acquaintance might reveal
that the mythical figure sweeping along
so grandly in front of the Archbishop
of York was something of a blackguard
-an alarming barbarian, with shocking
tastes, small knowledge of the rules,
and altogether far from correct. Pope
solved these difficulties in a masterly
manner. He supplied exactly what was
wanted. He gave the eighteenth century a Homer after its own heart-a
Homer who was the father-not quite
of poetry, indeed, but of something
much more satisfactory-of what the
eighteenth century believed poetry to
be; and, very properly, it gave him a
fortune in return.
The eighteenth century has acquired a;
reputation for scepticism; but this is ai
mistake. In truth there has never been
a less sceptical age. Its beliefs were
rigid, intense, and imperturbable. In
literature, as in every other department


SP


2




( 0 )
of life, an unquestioning orthodoxy
reigned. It was this extraordinary selfsufficiency that gave the age its force;
but the same quality causes the completeness of its downfall. |When the
reaction came, the absolute &ertainty of
the past epoch seemed to invest it with
the maximum degree of odium and
absurdity. the romantics were men
who had lost their faith; and they rose
against the old dispensation with all the
zeal of rebels and heretics. Inevitably
their fury fell with peculiar vehemence
upon Pope. The great idol was overturned amid shouts of execration and
scornful laughtey The writer who, for
three generations, had divided with
Milton the supreme honour of English
ipoetry, was pronounced to be shallow,
pompous, monotonous, meretricious,
and not a poet at all. )
Now that we have perhaps emerged
trom romanticism, it is time to consider
the master of the eighteenth century
with a more impartial eye. This is iot




( II )
altogether an easy task. Though we
may be no longer in the least romantic,
are we not still-I hesitate to suggest it
-are we not still slightly Victorian? Do
we not continue to cast glances of
furtive admiration towards the pontiffs
of that remarkable era, whose figures,
on the edge of our horizon, are still
visible, so lofty, and so large? We can
discount the special pleadings of Wordsworth; but the voice of Matthew Arnold, for instance, still sounds with
something like authority upon our ears.
Pope, said Matthew Arnold, is not a
classi6Tf oour poetry, he is a classic of
our prose. He was without an " adequate poetic criticism  of life"; his
criticism of life lacked " high seriousness "; it had neither largeness, freedom
insight nor benignity. Matthew Arnold
was a poet, but his conception of poetry
reminds us that he was also an inspector
of schools. That the essence of poetry
is "high seriousness" is one of those
noble platitudes which commend themif
I1




( I2 )
selves immediately a, both obvious and
comfortable. But, in reality, obviousness and comfort have very little to do
with poetry. It is not the nature of
poetry to be what anyone expects; on
the contrary, it is its nature to be surprising, to be disturbing, to be impossible. Poetry and high seriousness!
Of course, to Dr Arnold's son, they
seemed to be inevitably linked together;
and certainly had the world been created
by Dr Arnold they actually would have
been. But-perhaps fortunately-it was
not. If we look at the facts, where do
we find poetry? In the wild fantasies
of Aristophanes, in the sordid lusts of
Baudelaire, in the gentle trivialities of
La Fontaine.
Dreadful was the din
Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now
With complicated monsters, head and tail,
Scorpion, and asp, and amphisbaena dire,
Cerastes horn'd, hydrus, and ellops drear,
And dipsasThat is not high seriousness; it is a
catalogue of curious names; and it is




( 3 )
poetry. There is poetry to be found
lurking in the metaphysical system of
Epicurus, and in the body of a flea.
And so need we be surprised if it invests a game of cards, or a gentleman
sneezing at Hampton Court?Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew,
A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw;
The gnomes direct, to every atom just,
The pungent grains of titillating dust.
Sudden, with starting tears each eye o'erflows,
And the high dome re-echoes to his nose.
Pope, we are told, was not only without " high seriousness "; he lacked no
less an "adequate poetic criticism      of
life." What does this mean? The phrase
is ambiguous; it signifies at once too
much and too little. If we are to understand-as the context seems to implythat, in Matthew Arnold's opinion, no
poetic criticism of life can be adequate
unless it possesses largeness, freedom,
and benignity, we must certainly agree
that Pope's poetic criticism of life was
far from adequate; for his way of
yriting was neither large nor free, and




( I4 )
there was nothing benignant about him.
But the words will bear another interpretation; and in this sense it may turn
out that Pope's poetic criticism of life
was adequate to an extraordinary degree.
Let us examine for a moment the
technical instrument which Pope used
-I mean the heroic couplet.
i WEen he was a young man, the poet
Walsh gave Pope a piece of advice.
/ "We have had great poets," he said,
"but never one great poet that was
i correct. I recommend you to make your
Aleading aim-correctness." Pope took
the advice, and became the most correct
f of poets. This was his chief title to glory
in the eighteenth century; it was equally
J the stick that he was most frequently
and rapturously beaten with, in the
nineteenth. Macaulay, in his essay on
Byron, devotes several pages of his best
forensic style to an exposure and denunciation of the absurd futility of the
" correctness " of the school of Pope.




( 15 )
"There is in reality," he declared,
C"only one kind of correctness in literature-that which has its foundation in
truth and in the principles of human
nature." But Pope's so-called correctness was something very different. It
consisted simply in a strict obedience
to a perfectly arbitrary set of prosodic
rules. Iis couplet was a purely artificial
structure-the product of mere convention; and, so far from there being
anfiy possble poetic merit in the kind of
correctness which it involved, this,"correctness "wasnh fact only "another
name for dullness and absurdityI A
short time ago, the distinguished poet,
M. Paul Valery, demolished Macaulay's
argument-no doubt quite unconsciously-in an essay full of brilliant subtlety and charming wit. He showed
conclusively the essentially poetic value
of purely arbitrary conventions. But,
for our purposes, so drastic a conclusion is unnecessary. For Macaulay
was mistaken, not only in his theory,




( i6 )
but in his facts. The truth is that the
English classical couplet-unlike the
French-had nothing conventional about it. On the contrary, it was the
inevitable, the logical, the natural outcome of the development of English."'. The fundamental element in the structure of poetry is rhythmical repetition.
In England, the favourite unit of this
repetition very early became the tensyllabled iambic line. Now it is clear
that the treatment of this line may be
developed in two entirely different directions. The first of these developments is Blank Verse. Milton's definition of Blank Verse is well known, and
it cannot be bettered: it consists, he
says, " in apt numbers, fit quantity of
| syllables, and the sense variously drawn
f out from one verse into another." Its
essence, in other words, is the combination formed by rhythmical variety playing over an underlying norm; and it is
easy to trace the evolution of this won



( I7)
derful measure from the primitive rigidity of Surrey to the incredible virtuosity of Shakespeare's later plays, where
Blank Verse reaches its furthest point of
development-where rhythmical variety
is found in unparalleled profusion, while
the underlying regularity is just, still,
miraculously preserved. After Shakespeare, the combination broke down;
the element of variety became so excessive that the underlying norm disappeared, with the result that the Blank
Verse of the latest Elizabethans is virtually indistinguishable from prose.
But suppose the ten-syllabled iambic
were treated in precisely the contrary
manner. Suppose, instead of developing the element of variety to its maximum, the whole rhythmical emphasis
were put upon the element of reguiaritv. What would be the result? This
svas the problem that presented itself
to the poets of the seventeenth century,
when it appeared to them   that the
possibilities of Blank Verse were played
sp


SP


3




( i8 )
out. (In reality they were not played
out, as Milton proved; but Milton was
an isolated and unique phenomenon.)
Clearly, the most effective method of
emphasising regularity is the use of
rhyme; and the most regular form of
rhyme is the couplet. Already, in the
splendid couplets of Marlowe and in
tbt' violent couplets of Donne, we can
find a foretaste of what the future had
in store for the measure. Shakespeare,
indeed, as if to show that there were no
limits either to his comprehension or to
his capacity, threw off a few lines which
might have been written by Pope, and
stuck them into the middle of Othello'.
But it was not until the collapse of
Blank Verse, about 1630, that the essen —
tial characteristics which lay concealed
in the couplet began to be exploited. It
She that in wisdom never was so frail
To change the cod's head for the salmon's tail;
She that could think, and ne'er disclose her mind;
See suitors following, and not look behind;
She was a wight, if ever such wight were,
To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.




( 9 )
was Waller who first fully apprehended
the implications of regularity; and it is
to this fact that his immense reputation
during the succeeding hundred years
was due. Waller disengaged the heroic
couplet from the beautiful vagueness of
Elizabethanism.  He perceived what
logically followed from a rhyme. He
saw  that regularity implied balan-e,
that balance implied antithesis; he saw
that balance also implied simplicity, that
simplicity implied clarity and that clarity
implied exactitude. The result was a
poetical instrument contrary in every
particular to  Blank Verse-a    form
which, instead of being varied, unsymmetrical, fluid, complex, profound and
indefinite, was regular, balanced, antithetical, simple, clear, and exact. But,
though Waller was its creator, the
heroic couplet remained, with him, in
an embryonic state. Its evolution was
slow; even Dryden did not quite bring
it to perfection. That great genius, with
ll his strength and all his brilliance,




( 20 )
lacked one quality without which no
mastery of the couplet could be complete-the elegance of perfect finish.
This was possessedj-  Pope. The most
correcti o poets-Pope was indeed that;
it is his true title to glory. But the
phrase does not mean that he obeyed
more slavishly than anybody else a set
of arbitrary rules. No, it means somebthing entirely different: it means that
the system of versification of which the
principle is regularity reached in Pope's
hands the final plenitude of its natureits ultimate significance-its supreme
consummation.
That Pope's verse is artificial there
can be no doubt. But then there is only
one kind of verse that is not artificial!
and that is, bad verse. Yet it is tru~1
that there is a sense in which Pope'
couplet is more artificial than, let us say,
the later Blank Verse of Shakespeare
it has less resemblance to nature. It is
regular and neat; but nature is "diver
et ondoyant"; and so is Blank Verse




( 21 )
Nature and Blank Verse are complicated; and Pope's couplet is simplicity
itself. But what a profound art underlies
thbat simplicity! Ppee's great achievement in     English   literature  was the
triumph EosnlmplicIation. In one of his
earliest works, the Pastorals, there is
simplicity and nothing else; Pope had
understood that if he could once attain
to a perfect simplicity, all the rest would
follow in good timeO deign to visit our forsaken seats,
The mossy fountains, and the green retreats!
Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade;
'Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade;
Where'er you tread, the blushing flow'rs shall rise,;And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.
The lines flow on with the most transparent limpidity —
But see, the shepherds shun the noon-day heat,
The lowing herds to murm'ring brooks retreat,
T 'o closer shades the panting flocks remove;
Ye Gods! and is there no relief for love?
Everything is obvious. The diction is
al. mass of cliches; the epithets are the
riost commonplace possible; the herds
low, the brooks murmur, the flocks




(22)
pant and revive, the retreats are green,
and the flowers blush. The rhythm is
that of a rocking-horse; and the sentiment is mere sugar. But what a relief!
What a relief to have escaped for once
from le mot propre, from subtle elaboration of diction and metre, from    complicated states of mind, and all the profound obscurities of Shakespeare and
Mr T. S. Eliot! How delightful to have
no trouble at all-to understand so very,
Ivery easily every single thing that) is
said!
This is Pope at his most youthful. As
he matured, his verse matured with
him. Eventually, his couplets, while
retaining to the full their early ease,
polish, and lucidity, became charged
with an extraordinary weight. He was
able to be massive, as no other wielder
of the measure has ever been.Lo! thy dread empire, Cha6os! is restbred;
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,
And universal Darkness buries All.
Here the slow solemnity of the effect




(23)
is produced by a most learned accumulation of accents and quantities; in some
of the lines all the syllables save two are
either long or stressed. At other times,
he uses a precisely opposite method; in
line after line he maintains, almost completely, the regular alternation of accented and unaccented syllables; and so
conveys a wonderful impression of
solidity and force.Proceed, great days! till learning fly the shore,
Till Birch shall blush with noble blood no more,
Till Thames see Eton's sons for ever play,
Till Westminster's whole year be holiday,
Till Isis' Elders reel, their pupils' sport,
And Alma Mater lie dissolved in Port!
Perhaps the most characteristic of all
the elements in the couplet is antithesis.
Ordinary regularity demands that the
s nse should end with every line-that
was a.prime necessity; but a more
scrupulous symmetry would require
something more-a division of the line
itself into two halves, whose meanings
should correspond. And yet a further
refinement was possible: each half might




( 24)
be again divided, and the corresponding
divisions in the two halves might be
so arranged as to balance each other.
The force of neatness could no further
go; and thus the most completely
evolved type of the heroic line is one
composed of four main words arranged
in pairs, so as to form a double antithesis.
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike
j is an example of such a line, andjPgge's
I poems are full of them. With astonishing ingenuity he bujAldsu  thie  exquisite structures, in which the parts are
so cunnmnly placed that they seem to
interlock spontaneously, and, while they
are all formed on a similar mode, are
yet so subtly adjusted that they produce
a fresh pleasure as each one appears.
But that is not all. Pope was pre-, eminently a satirist. Hewas naturaly
drawn to the contempatiohuman
being  their conduct in society, their
characters Tiheir.T. mo  tir destinies; and the feelings which these




( 25
contemplations habitually aroused in
him were those of scorn and hatred.
Civilisation illumined by animositysuch was his theme; such was the
passionate and complicated material
from which he wove his patterns of
balanced precision and polished clarity.
[Antithesis penetrates below the structure; it permeates the whole conception
cf his work. Fundamental opposites
clash, and are reconciled. The profundities of persons,-the futilities of
existence, the rage and spite of geniusthese thin-gs are mixed together, and
'resented to our eyes in the shape of
Chinese box. The essence of all art is
he accomplishment of the impossible.
This cannot be done, we say; and it is
done. What has happened? A magician
has waved his wand. It is impossible
that Pope should convey to us his
withering sense of the wretchedness
and emptiness of the fate of old women
in society, in five lines, each containing
four words, arranged in pairs, so as to


SP


4




(26)
form   a double antithesis.     But the
magician waves his wand, and there it
isSee how the world its veterans rewards!
A youth of frolics, an old age of cards;
Fair to no purpose, afio no eg
Y-ung without lovers, Qld without a fie
A fop their passion, and their prize a sot;
Alye ridiculous, and dqad forgot!
And now, perhaps, we have discovered what may truly be said to have been
Pope's "poetic criticism  of life."  His
poetic criticism of life was, simply and
solely, the heroic couplet.
Pope was pre-eminently a satirist; and.
so it is only natural that his enemies
should take him to task for not being
something else. He had no benignity:'
he had no feeling for sensuous beauty
he took     ijfereit m   nature; he was
pompous-did      he not wear a wig?
Possibly; but if one is to judge poets
by what they are without, where is
one to end? One might point out that
Wordsworth had no sense of humour,
that Shele   did not understand human
------ - --       1




( 27 )
beings, that Keats could not read Greek,
and that Matthew Arnok a        tQwear
widg. And, if one looks more closely,
one perceives that there were a good
many things that Pope could do very
well-when he wanted to. Sensuous
beauty, for instanceDie of a rose in aromatic pain.
If that is not sensuously beautiful, what
ts? Then, we are told he did not
ccompose with his eyes on the object."
But once Pope looked at a spider, and
this was what he composedThe spider's touch how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.
Could Wordsworth have done better?
It is true that he did not often expatiate
upon the scenery; but, when he chose,
he could call up a vision of nature which
is unforgettableLo! where Mseotis sleeps, and hardly flows
The freezing Tanais thro' a waste of snows,
We see, and we shiver. It cannot be
denied that Pope wore a wig; it must
Even be confessed that there are traces,




(28 )
in his earlier work especially, of that
inexpressive ornament in the rococo
style, which was the bane of his age;
but the true Pope was not there. The
true Pope threw his wig into the corner
of the room, and used all the plainest
iwords in the dictionary. He used them
carefully, no doubt, very carefully, but
ihe  used   them-one-syllabled, Saxon
words, by no means pretty-they cover
his pages; and some of his pages are
among the coarsest in English literature. There are passages in the Dunciad
which might agitate Mr James Joyce.
Far from being a scrupulous worshipper i
of the noble style, Pope was a realistin thought and in expression. He could
describe a sordid interior as well as any
French novelistIn the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,
The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,
On once a flock-bed, but repair'd with straw,
With tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw,
The George and Garter dangling from that bed
Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
Great Villiers lies....
But these are only the outworks of the




( 29)
citadel. The heart of the man was not
put into descriptions of physical things;
it was put into descriptions of people
whom   he disliked.  It is in those
elaborate Characters, in which, through
a score of lines or so, the verse rises in,wave upon wave of malice, to fall at
last with a crash on the devoted head
of the victim-in the sombre magnificence of the denunciation of the great
dead Duke, in the murderous insolence
of the attack on the great living Duchess,.n the hooting mockery of Bufo, in the
devastating analysis of Addison-it is
here that Pope's art comes to its climax.
With what a relish, with what a thrill,,we behold once more the impossible
feat-the couplet, that bed of Procrustes, fitted exactly and eternally with
the sinuous egoism of Addison's spirit,
or the putrescent nothingness of Lord
Hervey's. In the character of Sporus,
says the great critic and lexicographer,
in memory of whom I have had the
honour of addressing you to-day, Pope




( 30 )
"seems to be actually screaming with
malignant fury." It is true.
Let Sporus tremble!-What? that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
-Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tates, and beauty ne'er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civillTydelight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.
His wit all see-saw, between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile antith sis._,
Amphibious thing! that acting efl   part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted hxt,
Fop at the toil, flatterer at the oard,
tris a lay, aniTnow s     tjs a Ti.
Eves tempter thus the Rabbins have expressed,
A cherub's tace, a reptjTell the rest;
Beauty 'th-t shocks you, parts that none can trust,
Wit that can creep, and p._de that licks the dust.
It is true: Pope seems to be actually
screaming; but let us not mistake. It is




( 3I )
only an appearance; actually, Pope is
not screaming at all; for these are
strange impossible screams, unknown
to the world of fact-screams endowed
with immortality. What has happened
then? Pope has waved his wand. He!
has turned his screams into poetry, with
che enchantment of the heroic couplet.,




CdMB9VI7~JDqE
Printed by W. LEWIS
at the University Press








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