We believe in a mathematical proposition without caring whether it was known to Archimedes or to Newton; and the God whose existence is proved like a proposition in Euclid brings us into no sympathy with the saints and heroes of old. Primitive imaginings as to the nature of God had become for Pope a meaningless jargon like the speculations of Ptolemaic astronomers. Theology divorced from history does not take us back to the Garden of Eden, but to some conventional age of which we know, and the poet knows, that it never existed except as a metaphysical hypothesis. We have novisions of heaven and hell, regions which obviously lie beyond the range of philosophy; and though Pope was of course attacked for omitting them, their appearance in his poem would have been æsthetically discordant as well as logically absurd. He deals with demonstration, not with tradition. History is a miscellaneous collection of precedents more or less applicable to modern times, but not the record of earlier stages of processes still at work. The new enlightenment had made men more conscious than their ancestors of the difference between the thoughts of succeeding ages, and made them incapable of the old naïve identification of classical, mediæval, and modern types; it had not yet revealed the identities which produce a new interest in the ancient forms as containing the germs of the new. Thus limited to the sphere of abstract logic, only one practical conclusion emerges in the doctrine to which the essay finally leads us, 'that whatever is is right.' Nothing is less poetical than optimism; for the essence of a poet's function is to harmonise the sadness of the universe.

27. Pope, it must be added, might have been more successful even under these conditions if he had been more consistent. Unfortunately, his logic is spoilt by his timidity or his real absence of speculative power. A consistent pantheism or a consistent scepticism may be made the sources of profoundly impressive poetry. Each of them generates a deep and homogeneous sentiment which may utter itself in song. Pope, as the mouthpiece of Spinoza or of Hobbes, might have written an impressive poem, if he had not attained to the level of Lucretius. But the age was not favourable to consistency and thoroughness. The 'Essay on Man' remains radically unsatisfactory considered as a whole, though there are many brief

passages marked by Pope's special felicity of touch; many in which the moral sentiment is true and tender; and many in which he forgets for a moment the danger of open heterodoxy, and utters with genuine force some of the deeper sentiments which haunt us in this mysterious universe.

28. Another side of Pope's genius is illustrated chiefly by the translation of Homer. That translation undoubtedly produced a more powerful influence upon the age than any other which has ever been executed. Bentley, doubtless, expressed the opinion of all qualified readers, even at that time, when he said that it was a pretty poem, but not Homer. And yet, if the authority of competent critics may be trusted, it enjoys, in virtue of a certain width and vigour of style, a stronger vitality than that of recent performances of incomparably better scholars. The artistic theory, however, which is assumed throughout the work, is all that need attract our attention. Pope's view of Homer illustrates the peculiar classicism of the time. The merit at which Pope specially aimed-according to the often repeated anecdote--was that described by the technical phrase 'correctness,' and to be correct was the same thing as to be classical. Warton, like Macaulay long afterwards, ridiculed the artificial code of criticism in which this formed the universal term of commendation. It is, however, worth while to endeavour to perceive its meaning a little more distinctly.

29. In religion, or morality, and in politics, the thought of the age recognised a system of abstract rules, mathematically precise and coherent, which, as regarded from various aspects, gave rise to the conceptions of the religion of nature, the law of nature, the social contract, and other allied hypotheses. A similar code was supposed to exist in the sphere of imagination. Obedience to that code constituted correctness, though deviations might sometimes be excused under the name of irregular greatness. The poetical creed was then, as afterwards, a 'religion of nature,' taking that phrase in the sense of Clarke, rather than the sense of modern pantheistic or poetic mysticism. The imagination was to work within the limits prescribed for it by the cool and impartial reason. Superstition and enthusiasm-the dreaded diseases in the religious world-were equally abhorrent in the sphere of

poetry. The poet was never to throw the reins upon the neck of his passion, or to abandon himself to a fine frenzy in defiance of mechanical laws. No sane critic will deny that there was a core of truth in these assumptions. The desire for correctness, so far as correctness implies symmetry, a continuous reference to the general effect in working out subordinate details, temperance in expression, and careful polish of style, is a sentiment indispensable to the creation of great and permanent work. The weakness of the Pope school consisted chiefly in the assumption that such a code of laws could be laid down in a series of mathematical propositions. The essence of poetry is to be spontaneous, and the laws obeyed by the imagination must, so to speak, be imbedded in its structure, not imposed from without. In the great ages of art the creative imagination is instinctively shocked by defects of harmony. In the more conscious and less passionate periods the instinct disappears, and the place is ill supplied by rules which can never be adequate, and which, therefore, appear to be artificial. The fine sense which enables a painter to draw an exquisite curve cannot be compensated by a pair of compasses, which enables a mechanic to draw a perfectly accurate and perfectly monotonous circle. The rules of Pope's period sanctioned the attempt to do by rule and compass what ought to be done by the eye. That is the natural result of reason intruding into the place of imagination, which makes poetry prosaic, as it lowers morality to a set of prudential maxims, and forces the religious instinct to abandon ideal symbols for a system of abstract laws.

30. But how were these rules to be framed? Where were men to look for that poetical code which was to take a place analogous to that of the law of nature?' The classical models, as interpreted by French critics, had the appearance of giving just the system of abstract rules founded on common sense which was required by the artist. There were difficulties, indeed, in accepting the French empire. The old English tradition remained throughout the century. Hume and Gibbon might prefer Racine to Shakespeare; but English writers in a blind way continued to protest against the chains imposed upon them. The rules of epic poetry and the law of dramatic unities never fairly established themselves. Addison, indeed,

criticised Milton by the help of Aristotle and Bossu, with all the correct jargon about the machinery, and the episodes, and the fable, and composed 'Cato' as a model of dramatic propriety. The old national vigour struggled against the imposition of these handcuffs, and Dennis, worst of critics. though he might be, ridiculed 'Cato' effectively enough. But though the code of rules never became satisfactorily formulated, its potential existence was more or less tacitly assumed. The classical poets and their commentators occupied a poetical status precisely analogous to that of the Bible in theology. The once living forces were paralysed but not dead. The critic had succeeded to the commentator, but had not yet become openly sceptical. Similarly the classicalism of the time was midway between the taste of the Renaissance and that of modern times. The poet, down to the time of Milton, could avail himself freely of classical types, and mix the Christian and heathen mythology without any perception of incongruity. In our own day the growth of an historical sense has enabled us to understand classical art more perfectly, but has forced us to recognise the impossibility of reanimating the dead bones. The modern revivals are free from the old daring anachronisms, but the old fire is quenched. They can exhibit at best a momentary play of the poetic fancy, or the painful industry of the antiquarian. The transitional period presents a compromise between these opposite points of view. The old incongruities had become shocking. Lycidas appeared to be simply a monstrosity when tried at the tribunal of common sense. St. Peter, it was plain, belonged to a different family from Phoebus and Comus, and the herald of the seas, and they ought not to be brought together. Milton, no one could deny, was guilty of the grossest anachronism. But, meanwhile, an incongruity of a different, and to us more vexatious, kind passed without notice. The old mythology was regarded as dead, but it was still to be employed.

31. How was the difficulty to be surmounted? By accepting as a principle that poets might deal in consciously devised figments, so long as they took care not to break the illusion by figments belonging to different categories. The

old spontaneous symbolism thus passed imperceptibly into an arbitrary conventionalism. What passed with ancient poets for divine inspiration was taken to be a process of conscious and deliberate invention. The process was precisely that which we have seen exemplified in theological and political controversies. Ancient prophets and legislators were no longer regarded as supernaturally inspired, but they were thought to have invented at one blow the mythologies and religious rites and political institutions which we now see to have been the slow growth of uncounted ages. In the same way the poet was thought to have consciously devised the legends and the imagery which formed the subject of his song. When the poetical writers personified abstract qualities by the help of capital letters, they fancied that they were simply repeating the process by which the pagan pantheon had been originally filled. And as the classical poetry had thus been constructed by a consciously artificial process, there was no reason why the same plan should not answer as well in the eighteenth century. It never occurred, apparently, to the writers of the time that the old gods could ever have been the objects of a genuine and spontaneous belief. The theory is very clearly expressed in Pope's preface to his translation.

32. Homer, he says, is specially distinguished by the strength of his 'invention,' and by this he meant something I quite different from exuberant vigour of expression or in2 tense glow of imaginative insight. 'Homer,' says Pope, 'not only appears the inventor of poetry, but he excels the inventors of all other arts in this, that he has swallowed up the honour of those who succeeded him.' Homer invented' poetry as, according to the deists, ancient legislators invented heaven and hell, or as Watt invented the steam-engine. He sat down deliberately to invent a story with a proper set of characters, which should be in conformity with the best canons of criticism. He invented allegorical personages, moreover, in which he wrapped up 'secrets of nature and physical philosophy.' How fertile will that imagination appear which was able to clothe all the properties of the elements, the qualifications of the mind, the virtues and vices, in forms and persons, and to introduce them into actions agreeable to the nature of the things they shadowed!' Then Homer, though