"Oh, lasting as those colours may they shine,
Free as thy stroke, yet faultless as thy line;
New graces yearly like thy works display,
Soft without weakness, without glaring gay;
Led by some rule, that guides, but not constrains;
And finish'd more through happiness than pains,
The kindred arts shall in their praise conspire,
One dip the pencil, and one string the lyre.
Yet should the Graces all thy figures place,
And breathe an air divine on ev'ry face;
Yet should the Muses bid my numbers roll
Strong as their charms, and gentle as their soul;
With Zeuxis' Helen thy Bridgewater vie,
And these be sung till Granville's Myra die:
Alas! how little from the grave we claim!
Thou but preserv'st a face, and I a name."
And shall we cut ourselves off from beauties like these with a theory?
Shall we shut up our books, and seal up our senses, to please the dull
spite and inordinate vanity of those "who have eyes, but they see
not--ears, but they hear not--and understandings, but they understand
not,"--and go about asking our blind guides, whether Pope was a poet or
not? It will never do. Such persons, when you point out to them a fine
passage in Pope, turn it off to something of the same sort in some other
writer. Thus they say that the line, "I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers
came," is pretty, but taken from that of Ovid--_Et quum conabar scribere,
versus erat_. They are safe in this mode of criticism: there is no danger
of any one's tracing their writings to the classics.
Pope's letters and prose writings neither take away from, nor add to his
poetical reputation. There is, occasionally, a littleness of manner, and
an unnecessary degree of caution. He appears anxious to say a good thing
in every word, as well as every sentence. They, however, give a very
favourable idea of his moral character in all respects; and his letters to
Atterbury, in his disgrace and exile, do equal honour to both. If I had to
choose, there are one or two persons, and but one or two, that I should
like to have been better than Pope!