In fine, though we do not agree with a contemporary critic, that the Opera is an entertainment that ought to be held in general estimation, yet we think the present a very proper time for its encourage. ment. It may serve to assist the euthanasia of the British character, of British liberty, and British morals,-by hardening the heart, while it softens the senses, and dissolving every manly and generous feeling in an atmosphere of voluptuous effeminacy. [February, 1818. ON THE QUESTION WHETHER POPE WAS A POET The Edinburgh Magazine.] THE question whether Pope was a poet, has hardly yet been settled, and is hardly worth settling; for if he was not a great poet, he must have been a great prose writer, that is, he was a great writer of some sort. He was a man of exquisite faculties, and of the most refined taste; and as he chose verse (the most obvious distinction of poetry) as the vehicle to express his ideas, he has generally passed for a poet, and a good one. If, indeed, by a great poet we mean one who gives the utmost grandeur to our conceptions of nature, or the utmost force to the passions of the heart, Pope was not in this sense a great poet; for the bent, the characteristic power of his mind, lay the contrary way; namely, in representing things as they appear to the indifferent observer, stripped of prejudice and passion, as in his critical essays; or in representing them in the most contemptible and insignificant point of view, as in his satires; or in clothing the little with mock-dignity, as in his poems of fancy; or in adorning the trivial incidents and familiar relations of life with the utmost elegance of expression, and all the flattering illusions of friendship or self-love, as in his epistles. He was not then distinguished as a poet of lofty enthusiasm, of strong imagination, with a passionate sense of the beauties of nature, or a deep insight into the workings of the heart; but he was a wit, and a critic, a man of sense, of observation, and the world; with a keen relish for the elegancies of art, or of nature when embellished by art, a quick tact for propriety of thought and manners, as established by the forms and customs of society, a refined sympathy with the sentiments and habitudes of human life, as he felt them, within the little circle of his family and friends. He was, in a word, the poet not of nature but of art: and the distinction between the two is this. The poet of nature is one who, from the elements of beauty, of power, and of passion in his own breast, sympathises with whatever is beautiful, and grand, and impassioned in nature, in its simple majesty, in its immediate appeal to the senses, to the thoughts and hearts of all men; so that the poet of nature, by the truth, and depth, and harmony of his mind, may be said to hold communion with the very soul of nature; to be identified with, and to foreknow, and to record the feelings of all men, at all times and places, as they are liable to the same impressions; and to exert the same power over the minds of his readers, that nature does. He sees things in their eternal beauty, for he sees them as they are; he feels them in their universal interest; for he feels them as they affect the first principles of his and our common nature. Pope was not assuredly a poet of this class, or in the first rank of it. He saw nature only dressed by art; he judged of beauty by fashion; he sought for truth in the opinions of the world; he judged of the feelings of others by his own. The capacious soul of Shakespeare had an intuitive and mighty sympathy with whatever could enter into the heart of man in all possible circumstances; Pope had an exact knowledge of all that he himself loved or hated, wished or wanted. Milton has winged his daring flight from heaven to earth through chaos and old night. Pope's muse never wandered with safety but from his library to his grotto, or from his grotto into his library again. His mind dwelt with greater pleasure on his own garden, than on the garden of Eden; he could describe the faultless whole-length mirror that reflected his own person better than the smooth surface of the lake that reflects the face of heaven; a piece of cut-glass, or a pair of paste buckles with more brilliance and effect than a thousand dew-drops glittering in the sun. He would be more delighted with a patent lamp than with the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow,' that fills the skies with its soft silent lustre, trembles through the cottage casement, and cheers the watchful mariner on the lonely wave. In short, he was the poet of personality and of polished life. That which was nearest to him was the greatest: the fashion of the day bore sway in his mind over the immutable laws of nature. He preferred the artificial to the natural in external objects, because he had a stronger fellow-feeling with the self-love of the maker or proprietor of a gew-gaw than admiration of that which was interesting to all mankind alike. He preferred the artificial to the natural in passion, because the involuntary and uncalculating impulses of the one hurried him away with a force and vehemence with which he could not grapple, while he could trifle with the conventional and superficial modifications of mere sentiment at will, laugh at or admire, put them on or off like a masquerade dress, make much or little of them, indulge them for a longer or a shorter time as he pleased, and because, while they amused his fancy and exercised his ingenuity, they never once disturbed his vanity, his levity, or indifference. His : mind was the antithesis of strength and grandeur: its power was the power of indifference. He had none of the inspired raptures of poetry he was in poetry what the sceptic is in religion. It cannot be denied that his chief excellence lay more in diminishing than 'in aggrandizing objects,-in checking than in encouraging our enthusiasm, -in sneering at the extravagancies of fancy or passion, instead of giving a loose to them,-in describing a row of pins and needles rather than the embattled spears of Greeks and Trojans,-in penning a lampoon or a compliment,-and in praising Martha Blount! Shakespeare says,— 'In fortune's ray and brightness The herd hath more annoyance by the brize And flies fled under shade, why then The thing of courage, As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathize, There is hardly any of this rough work in Pope. His muse was on a peace establishment, and grew somewhat effeminate by long ease and indulgence. He lived in the smiles of fortune, and basked in the favour of the great. In his smooth and polished verse we meet with no prodigies of nature, but with miracles of wit; the thunders of his pen are whispered flatteries; his forked lightnings playful sarcasms; for the gnarled oak' he gives us the soft myrtle'; for rocks, and seas, and mountains, artificial grass-plats, gravel-walks, and tinkling rills; for earthquakes and tempests, the breaking of a flowerpot, or the fall of a china-jar; for the tug and war of the elements, or the deadly strife of the passions, we have 'Calm contemplation and poetic ease.' Yet within this retired and narrow circle, how much, and that how exquisite, was contained! What discrimination, what wit, what delicacy, what fancy, what lurking spleen, what elegance of thought, what refinement of sentiment! It is like looking at the world through a microscope, where every thing assumes a new character and a new consequence, where things are seen in their minutest circumstances and slightest shades of difference,-when the little becomes gigantic, the deformed beautiful, and the beautiful deformed. The wrong end of the magnifier is, to be sure, held to every thing; but still the exhibition is highly curious, and we know not whether to be most pleased or surprised. ON RESPECTABLE PEOPLE. The Edinburgh Magazine.] [August 1818. THERE is not any term that is oftener misapplied, or that is a stronger instance of the abuse of language, than this same word, respectable. By a respectable man is generally meant a person whom there is no reason for respecting, or none that we choose to name: for if there is any good reason for the opinion we wish to express, we naturally assign it as the ground of his respectability. If the person whom you are desirous to characterize favourably, is distinguished for his goodnature, you say that he is a good-natured man; if by his zeal to serve his friends, you call him a friendly man; if by his wit or sense, you say that he is witty or sensible; if by his honesty or learning, you say so at once; but if he is none of these, and there is no one quality which you can bring forward to justify the high opinion you would be thought to entertain of him, you then take the question for granted, and jump at a conclusion, by observing gravely, that he is a very respectable man.' It is clear, indeed, that where we have any striking and generally admitted reasons for respecting a man, the most obvious way to ensure the respect of others, will be to mention his estimable qualities; where these are wanting, the wisest course must be to say nothing about them, but to insist on the general inference which we have our particular reasons for drawing, only vouching for its authenticity. If, for instance, the only motive we have for thinking or speaking well of another is, that he gives us good dinners, as this is not a valid reason to those who do not, like us, partake of his hospitality, we may (without going into particulars) content ourselves with assuring them, that he is a most respectable man: if he is a slave to those above him, and an oppressor of those below him, but sometimes makes us the channels of his bounty or the tools of his caprice, it may be as well to say nothing of the matter, but to confine ourselves to the safer generality, that he is a person of the highest respectability : if he is a low dirty fellow, who has amassed an immense fortune, which he does not know what to do with, the possession of it alone will guarantee his respectability, if we say nothing of the manner in which he has come by it, or in which he spends it. A man may be a knave or a fool, or both (as it may happen), and yet be a most respectable man, in the common and authorized sense of the term, provided he keeps up appearances, and does not give common fame a handle for no longer keeping up the imposture. The best title to the character of respectability lies in the convenience of those who echo the cheat, and in the conventional hypocrisy of the world. Any one 433 VOL. XI. : 2 E may lay claim to it who is willing to give himself airs of importance, and can find means to divert others from inquiring too strictly into his pretensions. It is a disposable commodity,-not a part of the man, that sticks to him like his skin, but an appurtenance, like his goods and chattels. It is meat, drink, and clothing to those who take the benefit of it by allowing others the credit. It is the current coin, the circulating medium, in which the fictitious intercourse of the world is carried on, the bribe which interest pays to vanity. Respectability includes all that vague and indefinable mass of respect floating in the world, which arises from sinister motives in the person who pays it, and is offered to adventitious and doubtful qualities in the person who receives it. It is spurious and nominal; hollow and venal. To suppose that it is to be taken literally or applied to sterling merit, would betray the greatest ignorance of the customary use of speech. When we hear the word coupled with the name of any individual, it would argue a degree of romantic simplicity to imagine that it implies any one quality of head or heart, any one excellence of body or mind, any one good action or praiseworthy sentiment; but as soon as it is mentioned, it conjures up the ideas of a handsome house with large acres round it, a sumptuous table, a cellar well stocked with excellent wines, splendid furniture, a fashionable equipage, with a long list of elegant contingencies. It is not what a man is, but what he has, that we speak of in the significant use of this term. He may be the poorest creature in the world in himself, but if he is well to do, and can spare some of his superfluities, if he can lend us his purse or his countenance upon occasion, he then buys golden opinions of us;-it is but fit that we should speak well of the bridge that carries us over, and in return for what we can get from him, we embody our servile gratitude, hopes, and fears, in this word respectability. By it we pamper his pride, and feed our own necessities. It must needs be a very honest uncorrupted word that is the go-between in this disinterested kind of traffic. We do not think of applying this word to a great poet or a great painter, to the man of genius or the man of virtue, for it is seldom we can spunge upon them. It would be a solecism for any one to pretend to the character who has a shabby coat to his back, who goes without a dinner, or has not a good house over his head. He who has reduced himself in the world by devoting himself to a particular study, or adhering to a particular cause, excites only a smile of pity, or a shrug of the shoulders at the mention of his name; while he who has raised himself in it by a different course, who has become rich for want of ideas, and powerful from want of principle, is looked up to with silent homage, and passes for a respectable man. The learned pate ducks |