The Sun.
London, England, 1850-12-07 00:00:00

" With ev'ry pleasing, ev'ry prudent part,
' Say what does Chloe want ?' She wants a heart.
She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought;
But never, never, reached one generous o:ought.
Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour,
Content to dwell in decencies for ever.
So very reasonable, so unmov'd,
Al never yet to lover, or to be lov'd.
She, while her lover pants upon her breast,
Can mark the figures on an Indian chest :
And when she sees her friend in deep despair,
Oberves how much a chintz exceeds mohair.—(Laugh te r.)
Forbid it Heav'n, a favour or a debt
She e'er should cancel !- but she may forget.
Safe is your secret still in Chloe's ear;
But none of Chloe's shall you ever hear.
01 all her dears she never slandered one,
But cares not if a thousand are undone.
Would Chloe know if you're alive or dead?
She bids her footman put it in her head.
Chloe is prudent—would you too be wise:
Then never break your heart when Chloe dies."
Having thus attempted to do justice to Pope's powers of
satire, I must not omit to mention what I consider to be
another of his felicities almost of an opposite character,
though I have perceived with pleasure since I noted this
topic, that I have been anticipated in the same line of
remark by the late Mr. Hazlitt; I say, with pleasure,
because that ingenious person was one of the guides and
favourites of a school the most opposed in theory and
practice to that of Pope—the Lake poets. I allude to
the extreme tact, skill, and delicacy with which he con-
veys a compliment, and frequently embodies in one preg-
nant line or couplet a complete panegyric of the character
he wishes to distinguish. Let me instance this by a few
examples. Sometimes the compliment appears merely
to be thrown out almost as it were by chance to illustrate
his meaning. So of the Duke of Chandos, whom at ano-
ther time he is supposed to have intended to ridicule
under the character of Timon—
" Thus gracious Chandos is beloved at sight."
Then of Lord Cornbury— s- - s .._
" Would ye be blestt despise low joys, low gains,
Disdain whatever Cornbnry disdains."
Of General Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia—
" One driv'n by strong benevolence of soul
.Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole."
These have reference to manly virtues; sometimes there
is the same oblique reference to female claims:—
" Hence beauty, waking all her tints, supplies
An angel's sweetness o'er Bridgewater's eyes."
At other times the eulogium is more direct. Take that
fine application to Lord Cobham of the effects of man's
ruling passion developing itself in death, which he has
been pursuing through a number of instances—the man
of pleasure, the miser, the glutton, the courtier, the co-
quette, all, for the most part, under circumstances de-
rogatory
to the pride of human nature, when he thus
sums them up—
" And you, brave Cobham, to the latest breath
Shall feel your ruling passionestrong in death ; -
Such, in these moments, as intall the past,
Oh, save my country, Heav'n4shall be your last."
How beautiful is the couplet to Vr. Arbuthnot, his phy-
sician and friend— *i
" Friend of my life ! which diel..n.ot you prolong,
The world had wanted many an idle song."
How ingenious that to the famous Philip Stanhope, Earl
of Chesterfield, on being desired to write some lines in an
album with his pencil— ..,./
" Accept a miracle instead of wit, ,
See two dull lines by Stanhope's pencil writ."
How happy is the allusion to Lord Peterborough,
who madds, a brilliant campaign in Spain within a won-
derfully short time. He represents him as assisting to
lay out his grounds—
" And he whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines
Now forms my quincunx, and now ranks my vines,
Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain,
Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain."
He always speaks of Murray, the great Lord Mans-
field, with pride and affection. It is true that one of the
worst line's he ever wrote is about him, the second in
this couplet—
" Graced as thou art with all the power of words,
So known, so honoured at the House of Lords."
—(A laugh.) An instance how much delicacy it re-
quires to introduce with effect familiar names and
things: sometimes it tells with great force—here it is
disastrously prosaic. We almost forgive it, however,
when he turns from the Palace of Westminster to the
Abbey opposite—
" Where Murray, long enough his country pride,
Shall be no more than Tully or than Hyde."
He again alludes to the aptitude for poetical composition
which Murray had exhibited, and also to the talent for
epigram which he assumes that the great orator Pulteney
would have displayed if he had not been engrossed by
politics—
" How sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast ;
How many Martials were in Pulteney lost."
These were for the most part his political friends; but
when he mentions Sir Robert Walpole, to whom his
friends more than himself were virulently opposed, how
respectful and tender is the reproach, how adroit and
insinuating the praise—
" Seen him I have, but in his happier hour,
Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power,—
Seen him uncumbered with a venal tribe,
Smile without art, and win without a bribe."—(Cheers.)
I might adduce many other instances; I might quote at
full length the noble epistle to Lord Oxford, but I will
sum up this topic with that striking passage in which.
while he enumerates the persons who encouraged and
fostered his earlier productions, ho presents us with a
gallery of illustrious portraits, sometimes conveys by a
single word an insight into their whole character, and
concludes the distinguished catalogue with the name of
that St. John whom he uniformly regarded with feelings
little short of idolatry, and which, however misplaced
and ill-grounded, have even in themselves something of
the poetical attribute—
" But why then publish? Granville the polite,
And knowing Walsh could tell me I could write ;
Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise,
And Congreve-loved, and Swift endured, my lays."
(Observe how the gentle and amiable Congreve " loved,"
and the caustic and cynical Swift " endured").
" The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield, read,
E'en mitred Rochester would not the head,"
(said to have been the ordinary symptom of Bishop At-
terbury being pleased; then comes the swelling climax),
" And St. John's self, great Dryden's friend before,
With open arms received one Poet more.
Happy the studies, when by these approved,
Happier their author, when by these beloved."
—(Cheers.) I feel that I ought not entirely to omit all
mention of the long satiric poem of the " Dunciad,"
upon which Pope evidently bestowed much care and
labour; but it is throughout disfigured by great ill-
nature, and by a pervading run of unpleasant and un-
savoury images. There is much spirit in the account of
the young high-born Dunce, who makes what is called
the Grand Tour—
" Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too,"
and tells how he
" Judicious drank, and greatly daring, dined."
There is a luscious kind of burlesque softness in
these lines—
" To happy convents, bosomed deep in vines,
Where slumber abbots, purple as their wines;
To isles of fragrance, lily-silvered vales,
Diffusing langour in their parting-gales;
To lands of singing and of dancing slaves,
Love-whispering meads, and lute-resounding waves."
One of the next distinguishing excellencies of Pope is
the vividness which he imparts to all the pictures be pre-
sents to the mind, and which hn attains by always mak-
ing use of the most appropriate terms which the matter
admits. This, in conjunction with his wonderful power
of compression, which he has probably carried further
than any one before or since, gives a terseness and com-
pleteness to all ho says in which ho is unrivalled. As
instances of this perfect picture painting I would refer
you, as I must not indefinitely indulge in long citations,
to the descriptions, all in the same Epistle on Riches, of
the Miser's House, the Man of Ross's charities, and of
the death of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.
" In the worst inn's worst room [it was in Yorkshire]
with mat half hung,
The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,
On once a flock bed, but repaired 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-alas I how changed from him,
That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim !"
If any should object that this is all very finished and
elaborate, but it is very minute—only miniature painting
after all—what do you say to this one couplet on the
operations of the Deity?
" Builds life on death, on change duration founds,
And gives the eternal wheels to know their rounds."
(Cheers.), I would beg any of the detractors of Pope
to furnish me with another couple of lines from any
author whatever which encloses so much sublimity of
meaning within such compressed limits, and such precise
terms. I must cite another passage, in which he ven-
tures on the same exalted theme, with somewhat more
enlargement. It would be impossible, however, for you
to hear it, and bring against it any charge of diffuse-
ness:--
" All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul;
That, chang'd through all, and:yet in all the same ;
Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame,
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent.
[There is a couplet indeed!]
Breathes in our soul, informs our mental part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart ;
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns;
To him no high, no low, no great, no small ;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all."
—( Applause.) Let me invite your attention to the few
following lines on the apportionment of separate instincts
or qualities to diffsrent animals, and be good enough to
observe how the single words clench the whole argument.
They are as descriptive as the bars of Ilayda's music in
the oratorio of the Creation:—
" What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mule's dint curtain, and the lynx's beam ;
Of smell, the headlong lioness between,
And hound sagacious on the tainted green ;
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,
To that which warbles through the vernal wood;
The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine,
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line."
What a couplet again is that! It is only about a spider;
but I guarantee its immortality.
If I set down the
terse, the accurate, the complete, the pungency of the
satiric point, the felicity of the well-turned compliment,
as the distinctive features of Pope's poetical excellence,