As in the case of the _Quarterly_ these untraced effusions may be
assigned, with fair confidence, to the principal originators of the
magazine: Wilson himself, Lockhart, and William Maginn (1793-1842), a
thriftless Irishman who helped to start _Fraser's Magazine_ in 1830, and
stood for Captain Shandon in Pendennis; author of _Bob Burke's Duel with
Ensign Brady_, "perhaps the raciest Irish story ever written."
They almost certainly combined in the heated attack on "The Cockney
School," of which Leigh Hunt's generous, but not always judicious,
advertisement was an obvious temptation to satire, embittered by
political bias. Coleridge, also, provided easy material for scorn from
vigorous manhood; and Shelley, as Wilson remarks elsewhere, was "the
greatest sinner of the oracular school--because the only true poet."
CHRISTOPHER NORTH ON POPE[1]
[1] A Discussion of the Edition by Bowles.
[From _Noctes Ambrosianae_, March, 1825]
_Tickler._ Pope was one of the most amiable men that ever lived. Fine
and delicate as were the temper and temperament of his genius, he had a
heart capable of the warmest human affection. He was indeed a loving
creature.
_North._ Come, come, Timothy, you know you were sorely cut an hour or
two ago--so do not attempt characteristics. But, after all, Bowles does
not say that Pope was unamiable.
_Tickler._ Yes, he does--that is to say, no man can read, even now, all
that he has written about Pope, without thinking on the whole, somewhat
indifferently of the man Pope. It is for this I abuse our friend Bowles.
_Shepherd._ Ay, ay--I recollect now some of the havers o' Boll's about
the Blounts,--Martha and Theresa, I think you call them. Puir wee bit
hunched-backed, windle-strae-legged, gleg-eed, clever, acute, ingenious,
sateerical, weel-informed, warm-hearted, real philosophical, and maist
poetical creature, wi' his sounding translation o' a' Homer's works,
that reads just like an original War-Yepic,--His Yessay on Man that, in
spite o' what a set o' ignoramuses o' theological critics say about
Bolingbroke and Croussass, and heterodoxy and atheism, and like haven,
is just-ane o' the best moral discourses that ever I heard in or out o'
the poupit,--His yepistles about the Passions, and sic like, in the
whilk he goes baith deep and high, far deeper and higher baith than mony
a modern poet, who must needs be either in a diving-bell or a balloon,--
His Rape o' the Lock o' Hair, wi' a' these Sylphs floating about in the
machinery o' the Rosicrucian Philosophism, just perfectly yelegant and
gracefu', and as gude, in their way, as onything o' my ain about
fairies, either in the _Queen's Wake_ or _Queen Hynde_,--His Louisa to
Abelard is, as I said before, coorse in the subject-matter, but, O sirs!
powerfu' and pathetic in execution--and sic a perfect spate o'
versification! His unfortunate lady, who sticked hersel for love wi' a
drawn sword, and was afterwards seen as a ghost, dim-beckoning through
the shade--a verra poetical thocht surely, and full both of terror and
pity....
_North._ Pope's poetry is full of nature, at least of what I have been
in the constant habit of accounting nature for the last threescore and
ten years. But (thank you, James, that snuff is really delicious)
leaving nature and art, and all that sort of thing, I wish to ask a
single question: what poet of this age, with the exception, perhaps, of
Byron, can be justly said, when put in comparison with Pope, to have
written the English language at all....
_Tickler._ What would become of Bowles himself, with all his elegance,
pathos, and true feeling? Oh! dear me, James, what a dull, dozing,
disjointed, dawdling, dowdy of a drawe would be his muse, in her very
best voice and tune, when called upon to get up and sing a solo after
the sweet and strong singer of Twickenham!
_North._ Or Wordsworth--with his eternal--Here we go up, and up, and up,
and here we go down, down, and here we go roundabout, roundabout!--Look
at the nerveless laxity of his _Excursion!_--What interminable prosing!--
The language is out of condition:--fat and fozy, thick-winded, purfled
and plethoric. Can he be compared with Pope?--Fie on't! no, no, no!--
Pugh, pugh!
_Tickler._ Southey--Coleridge--Moore?
_North._ No; not one of them. They are all eloquent, diffusive, rich,
lavish, generous, prodigal of their words. But so are they all deficient
in sense, muscle, sinew, thews, ribs, spine. Pope, as an artist, beats
them hollow. Catch him twaddling.
_Tickler._ It is a bad sign of the intellect of an age to depreciate the
genius of a country's classics. But the attempt covers such critics with
shame, and undying ridicule pursues them and their abettors. The Lake
Poets began this senseless clamour against the genius of Pope.