artist than Pope. He chooses every word with the greatest care for its
value as both sound and sense; his minor technique is well-night perfect,
except sometimes in the matter of rimes; and in particular the variety
which he secures, partly by skilful shifting of pauses and use of extra
syllables, is remarkable; though it is a variety less forceful than
Dryden's.

[Note: The judgments of certain prominent critics on the poetry of Pope and
of his period may well be considered. Professor Lewis E. Gates has said:
'The special task of the pseudo-classical period was to order, to
systematize, and to name; its favorite methods were, analysis and
generalization. It asked for no new experience. The abstract, the typical,
the general--these were everywhere exalted at the expense of the image, the
specific experience, the vital fact.' Lowell declares that it 'ignored the
imagination altogether and sent Nature about her business as an impertinent
baggage whose household loom competed unlawfully with the machine-made
fabrics, so exquisitely uniform in pattern, of the royal manufactories.'
Still more hostile is Matthew Arnold: 'The difference between genuine
poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly
this: Their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry
is conceived and composed in the soul. The difference is immense.' Taine is
contemptuous: 'Pope did not write because he thought, but thought in order
to write. Inky paper, and the noise it makes in the world, was his idol.'
Professor Henry A. Beers is more judicious: 'Pope did in some inadequate
sense hold the mirror up to Nature.... It was a mirror in a drawing-room,
but it gave back a faithful image of society, powdered and rouged, to be
sure, and intent on trifles, yet still as human in its own way as the
heroes of Homer in theirs, though not broadly human.'

It should be helpful also to indicate briefly some of the more specific