Vida, and of Horace, in the first place; and, still more unfortunately, the poet's own arguments on his doctrine show that what he meant by following Nature, and what we mean by it, are two quite different things. He, usually at least, means “stick

to the usual, the ordinary, the commonplace."

I venture to think this is a somewhat inadequate statement of the point at issue. Whether Pope's idea of "following Nature" was precisely the same as our own (which, for all we know, may be equally transient) does not seem to me a very important matter; and to define with mathematical precision what is meant by "Nature" is impossible. Nor does it appear to be necessarily a proof of Pope's want of critical power that Boileau, Vida, and Horace, had all arrived at the same conclusion before him. But it is a matter of importance that the principle recognised by these poets was in essence the same as that of Pope; that it was radically different from the principle followed in practice by Marino, Gongora, Voiture, Cowley, and many other poets of repute in the seventeenth century; and that in Pope's antagonism to the principles of the Metaphysical School is reflected the opposition between the decadent spirit of the Middle Ages and the advancing spirit of the Renaissance. To say that the advice of Pope means only "stick to the usual, the ordinary, the commonplace," is scarcely a just way of interpreting the deeper movement of taste that runs beneath the surface of his argument.

Pope meant something definite by the following of "Nature"; and he shows what his meaning is by his constant antithesis (often, it is true, ambiguous and confused) between this word and "wit." Others had of course expressed before him the same artistic perception. Mulgrave had said in his Essay on Poetry :

That silly thing men call sheer wit avoid,
With which our age so nauseously is cloyed.
Humour is all; wit should be only brought
To turn agreeably some proper thought.

Granville had put the same thought into another shape:

1 History of Criticism, vol. ii. p. 456.

Poets are limners of another kind,

To copy out ideas in the mind;

Words are the paint by which their thoughts are shown

And Nature sits the object to be drawn ;
The written picture we applaud or blame,
But as the due proportions are the same,
Who driven with ungovernable fire,

Or void of art, beyond these bounds aspire,
Gigantic forms and monstrous births alone

Produce, which Nature, shocked, disdains to own.1

Keeping in view this principle of following Nature, Dryden had recommended the constant study of Virgil as a model :

He (Virgil) is everywhere above conceits of epigrammatic wit and gross hyperboles; he maintains majesty in the midst of plainness; he shines but glares not; and is stately without ambition, which is the vice of Lucan. I drew my definition of poetical wit from my particular consideration of him: for propriety of thoughts and words are only to be found in him; and where they are proper they will be delightful.2

Opinions like these-which from the Restoration onwards were always multiplying-far from being in Pope's age "commonplace," had still their battle to fight against that idea of "Wit" which, I have attempted to show in an earlier chapter, sprang out of the decay of Medievalism.3 The Essay on Criticism was an effort to codify the new law of the Renaissance with regard to poetical imitation. It is divided into three sections. In the first Pope dwells upon the chaotic state of Criticism in his day, and the many abuses of the art which consequently prevail; lays down his main rule of following Nature; and explains that the rules to be observed must be studied in the works of the great classical writers, because their way of proceeding is "Nature still, but Nature methodised." In the second section of the Essay, which is much the finest, he illustrates the necessity of his doctrine by many examples of False Wit, and produces his famous definition of True Wit, which he declares to be :

1 On Unnatural Flights in Poetry.
3 Vol. iii. chapter vi.

2 See vol. iii. p. 531.

Nature to advantage dressed,

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.

In the third section he describes the character of the good critic, and gives an historical sketch of those who have most distinguished themselves in the art, closing it with an elegant compliment to Walsh, who, as he told Spence, was the first to advise him to aim at "correctness." The execution of the central design is very irregular; the arrangement being often confused, and the particular thoughts so unconnected as to leave the impression that the epigrams have been produced without method. Pope had as yet by no means acquired that mastery of expression which distinguished him in his maturity; and there are probably more faulty constructions in the Essay on Criticism than in any other of his works. Much ambiguity arises from the use of the word "wit," which, in the Essay, has the various meanings of understanding, genius, conceit, and judgment, and is sometimes employed in the same sentence to express contrary ideas, as :—

Some, to whom Heaven in wit has been profuse,
Want as much more, to turn it to its use;

For wit and judgment often are at strife,

Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.

Now and then the poet appears to be beaten by difficulties of expression, as in the following passage, where the general structure of the verse seems to require in some form the use of the word "imagination" in the second line :

Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away;

and in more than one couplet the sense is entirely obscured by the elliptical grammar, as in these very poor and flat lines :

Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translations
By wits, than critics in as wrong quotations.

It must be added that both the history of criticism and the appreciation of individual critics contained in the

Essay are crude and sometimes puerile. These defects are, however, excusable when the age of the author is considered, and if this be taken into account, few impartial judges will deny that, for a boy of twenty-one, the Essay on Criticism is a marvellous performance. When we estimate it with reference to Pope's claim to be held a representative critic, we are bound to remember that his aim was to produce not a treatise of analytical reason, but a didactic poem. Judged by this standard, Johnson's praise of the Essay does not seem to be exaggerated :

The Essay on Criticism is one of Pope's greatest works, and if he had written nothing else would have placed him among the first critics and the first poets, as it exhibits every mode of excellence that can embellish or dignify didactic compositionselection of matter, novelty of arrangement, justice of precept, splendour of illustration, and propriety of digression.1

In the same year that the Essay on Criticism was published, Pope produced in The Rape of the Lock the most brilliant illustration that he, or indeed any other poet, ever devised of the principles advocated in the Essay. It happened that, in May 1711, Robert, seventh Baron Petre, in a freak of gallantry, cut a lock of hair from the head of Arabella Fermor, a young lady of beauty and fashion. Both parties belonged to leading Roman Catholic families, and as the incident seemed likely to cause divisions in a religious society which it was expedient to keep united, Pope's friend Caryll, of Ladyholt in Sussex, suggested that he might bring about a reconciliation by treating the subject humorously in poetry. The fruit of the suggestion appeared in the first draft of The Rape of the Lock, published in Lintot's Miscellany of May 1712. In this early form the poem consisted of two cantos, containing together 334 lines. It was without the machinery of the Sylphs, the episode of Belinda's toilet, the voyage up the Thames to Hampton Court, the game of Ombre, and the mission of Umbriel to the Cave of Spleen. These additions were made in 1713, after Pope had become acquainted with the

1 Lives of the Poets: Pope.

book of the Comte de Gabalis on the Rosicrucians; and The Rape of the Lock then assumed its expanded form of five cantos containing 794 lines. The motto, adapted from Martial, prefixed to the first edition, was replaced by one from Ovid, in order to emphasise Pope's declaration in dedicating the poem to Miss Fermor, that almost all the incidents and characters were fictitious.

The poem thus altered was received with almost universal applause. It produced the happy effect hoped for by Caryll, and the only person glanced at in it who seems, and not unnaturally, to have been offended was Sir George Brown, the original of Sir Plume. One harsh voice was, however, raised in disparagement of its quality. Dennis, the critic, now, through many pin-pricks, become Pope's implacable enemy, could see no merit in the performance. He proved, in a pamphlet, by many weighty arguments, that the whole thing was an imposture; and Pope, who respected his ability, gave heed to his criticisms. He even paid him the compliment of making changes to meet his objections, and when The Rape of the Lock appeared among the collected poems in the quarto of 1717, it was found to contain a final improvement in the speech of Clarissa, inserted for the first time in the fifth canto.

The censure of Dennis, which seems to have made the most impression upon Pope, was ethical rather than æsthetic. "The Rape of the Lock," said the critic, "is an empty trifle, which cannot have a moral." Clarissa's speech is evidently intended to supply the omission thus noted; and as, amidst the chorus of admiration lavished upon the poem, Dennis's criticism, in spite of the importance which Pope attached to it, has never received much attention, it seems worth while to consider it in connection with what Joseph Warton says in praise of the work :

I hope (the latter observes in his Essay on the Genius of Pope) it will not be thought an exaggerated panegyric to say that The Rape of the Lock is the best satire extant; that it contains the truest and liveliest picture of modern life; and that the subject is of a more elegant nature, as well as more artfully conducted, than that of any other heroic-comic poem.