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I grant you freely that POPE played his Part
Sometimes ignobly- but he loved his Art;
I grant you freely that he sought his Ends
Not always wisely-but he loved his Friends;
And who of Friends a nobler Roll could show—
Swift, St. John, Bathurst, Marchmont, Peterb'ro',
Arbuthnot

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Poet

(So Hamlet thought)

And Hamlet (Sir) was right.
But leave POPE's Life. To-day, methinks, we touch
The Work too little and the Man too much.
Take up the Lock, the Satires, Eloise·
What Art supreme, what Elegance, what Ease!
How keen the Irony, the Wit how bright,
The Style how rapid, and the Verse how light!
Then read once more, and you shall wonder yet
At Skill, at Turn, at Point, at Epithet.
"True Wit is Nature to Advantage dressed "
Was ever Thought so pithily expressed?
"And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line"
Ah, what a Homily on Yours . . . and Mine!
Or take to choose at Random-take but This
"Ten censure wrong for one that writes amiss."

Friend

Poet

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Packed and precise, no doubt. Yet surely those
Are but the Qualities we ask of Prose.
Was he a POET?

Yes: if that be what
Byron was certainly and Bowles was not;
Or say you grant him, to come nearer Date,
What Dryden had, that was denied to Tate

Friend

Poet

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Which means, you claim from him the Spark divine,
Yet scarce would place him on the highest Line-

True, there are Classes.

POPE was most of all

Akin to Horace, Persius, Juvenal;

POPE was, like them, the Censor of his Age,

An Age more suited to Repose than Rage;

When Rhyming turned from Freedom to the Schools,

And shocked with License, shuddered into Rules;
When Phoebus touched the Poet's trembling Ear
With one supreme Commandment Be thou Clear;
When Thought meant less to reason than compile,
And the Muse labored. . . chiefly with the File.
Beneath full Wigs no Lyric drew its Breath
As in the Days of great ELIZABETH;
And to the Bards of ANNA was denied

The Note that Wordsworth heard on Duddon side.
But POPE took up his Parable, and knit
The Woof of Wisdom with the Warp of Wit;
He trimmed the Measure on its equal Feet,
And smoothed and fitted till the Line was neat;
He taught the Pause with due Effect to fall;
He taught the Epigram to come at Call;
He wrote
Friend-
Poet-

His Iliad!

Well, suppose you own

You like your Iliad in the Prose of Bohn,
Tho' if you'd learn in Prose how Homer sang,
"Twere best to learn of Butcher and of Lang,
Suppose you say your Worst of POPE, declare
His Jewels Paste, his Nature a Parterre,
His Art but Artifice -I ask once more
Where have you seen such Artifice before?
Where have you seen a Parterre better graced,
Or gems that glitter like his Gems of Paste?
Where can you show, among your Names of Note,
So much to copy and so much to quote?
And where, in Fine, in all our English Verse,
A Style more trenchant and a Sense more terse?

So I, that love the old Augustan Days
Of formal Courtesies and formal Phrase;
That like along the finished Line to feel
The Ruffle's Flutter and the Flash of Steel;
That like my Couplet as Compact as Clear;
That like my Satire sparkling tho' severe,
Unmixed with Bathos and unmarred by Trope,
I fling my Cap for Polish- and for POPE!

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And shocked with License, shuddered into Rules;
When Phoebus touched the Poet's trembling Ear
With one supreme Commandment Be thou Clear;
When Thought meant less to reason than compile,
And the Muse labored. . . chiefly with the File.
Beneath full Wigs no Lyric drew its Breath
As in the Days of great ELIZABETH;
And to the Bards of ANNA was denied

The Note that Wordsworth heard on Duddon side.
But POPE took up his Parable, and knit
The Woof of Wisdom with the Warp of Wit;
He trimmed the Measure on its equal Feet,
And smoothed and fitted till the Line was neat;
He taught the Pause with due Effect to fall;
He taught the Epigram to come at Call;
He wrote

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Well, suppose you own

You like your Iliad in the Prose of Bohn,
Tho' if you'd learn in Prose how Homer sang,
"Twere best to learn of Butcher and of Lang,·
Suppose you say your Worst of POPE, declare
His Jewels Paste, his Nature a Parterre,
His Art but Artifice. -I ask once more
Where have you seen such Artifice before?
Where have you seen a Parterre better graced,
Or gems that glitter like his Gems of Paste?
Where can you show, among your Names of Note,
So much to copy and so much to quote?
And where, in Fine, in all our English Verse,
A Style more trenchant and a Sense more terse?

So I, that love the old Augustan Days
Of formal Courtesies and formal Phrase;
That like along the finished Line to feel
The Ruffle's Flutter and the Flash of Steel;
That like my Couplet as Compact as Clear;
That like my Satire sparkling tho' severe,
Unmixed with Bathos and unmarred by Trope,
I fling my Cap for Polish- and for POPE!

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