Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1925-02-26

breast, to which the man is ever true.
One has but to look around him to
see the truth of this. 1t is. possible
to pick out some ruling principle for
each one OF our friends. With one
1t viii be love of power, with another
knowledge, or gold, or love of ease.
The merchants toll the sace's Incidence
The monks humility, the hero's pride,
ALL all alike, find reason on their side.
We are pretty hard up, indeed,
when we cannot marshal a host of
good reasons to back us up in what
we want to do!
The various passions of mankind
are not so bad as they might appear,
Pope points out. Anger supplies zeal
and fortitude; avarice gives prudence,
and sloth, philosophy. Lust, through
some certain strainers well refined,
is gentle love and charms all woman
kind This couplet is paralleled by
one in Buttons "Kasidah," which
runs: "Who fought for female as for
food when Mays awoke to warm de-
sire; and such the Lust that grew to
Love when Fancy lent purer fire"
This light and darkness in our chaos Joined,
What shall divide? The God within the mind.
Pope borrowed that last expression
from Plato. What a great one 1t is,
the God within the mind"
On the point Of vice, in the alb
stract, Pope breaches even better
than minister. He says:
Vice is a monster of so frightful men
As, to be hated, needs but TO be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
This is a pretty good example Of
what the poet meant, when, in his
Introduction, he declared that he
could express his thoughts more
briefly in poetry than In prose itself.
1t would be hard indeed, to pack
that much into the same number of
words in an essay. He puts an eter-
nal truth into unforgettable words.
When man does this, he is writing
great poetry.
Heavens great view, Pope says,
must be the whole. not the individual,
and builds on wants, and on defects
Of the mind. the joy, the peace, the
glory of mankind"
whateer the passion, knowledge, fame or
No one win change his neighbor with himself.
The learned is happy nature TO explore,
The fool is happy that ne knows no more.
Hope travels through the poet
tells US, nor quits US when we die"
Then comes that oft-quoted pas
sage:
Behold the child, by natures kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw:
Some livelier plaything gives his youth de-
light,
A lit-le louder but as empty quite:
Scarfa, garters. gold. smuse his ripper stage
And beads and prayer books are the toys of
age:
Pleased with this bauble still. as that before
Till tired he sleeps, and life's poor play
is DER.
The serious reader need not be per-
turbed over that characterization of
life as poor play. Pope was a great
writer, and great writers must needs
fit the expression to the thought
Often ones writing takes complete
possession of the writer, and he is
surprised to see the thing almost
write itself 1t is as if some other
hand. some other brain, were doing
the work, and be but a spectator at
the show.
Pope was not a pessimist when he
wrote those lines. 1 am convinced, al
though the irony of life struck him
as 1t has many others through the
ages. He did not mean that life is
nothing but poor play. Mostly he
said IT that way because it rhymedi
I'm folly's cup still laughs the
bubble, JOY" Pope Immediately added,
and clinched his belief in the good
ness of life and God by ending the
epistle with this couplet:
IT'S this. though mans fool, yet God
is wise.