cold water upon his
morality. We may count up his affectations, ridicule his platitudes,
make heavy deductions for his insincerity, denounce his too frequent
indulgence in a certain love of dirt, which he shares with, and in which
indeed he is distanced by, Swift; and decline to believe in the virtue,
or even in the love of virtue, of a man stained by so many vices and
weaknesses. Yet I must decline to believe that men can gather grapes off
thorns, or figs off thistles, or noble expressions of moral truth from a
corrupt heart thinly varnished by a coating of affectation. Turn it how
we may, the thing is impossible. Pope was more than a mere literary
artist, though he was an artist of unparalleled excellence in his own
department. He was a man in whom there was the seed of many good
thoughts, though choked in their development by the growth of
innumerable weeds. And I will venture, in conclusion, to adduce one more
proof of the justice of a lenient verdict. I have had already to quote
many phrases familiar to everyone who is tinctured in the slightest
degree with a knowledge of English literature; and yet have been haunted
by a dim suspicion that some of my readers may have been surprised to
recognise their author. Pope, we have seen, is recognised even by judges
of the land only through the medium of Byron; and therefore the
'Universal Prayer' may possibly be unfamiliar to some readers. If so, it
will do them no harm to read over again a few of its verses. Perhaps,
after that experience, they will admit that the little cripple of
Twickenham, distorted as were his instincts after he had been stretched
on the rack of this rough world, and grievous as were his offences
against the laws of decency and morality, had yet in him a noble strain
of eloquence significant of deep religious sentiment. A phrase in the
first stanza may shock us as bordering too closely on the epigrammatic;
but the whole poem from which I take these stanzas must, I think, be
recognised as the utterance of a tolerant, reverent, and kindly heart:

Father of all! in every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage--
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

Thou great First Cause, least understood,
Who all my sense confined
To know but this, that thou art good,
And that myself am blind.

...

What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do,
This, teach me more than hell to shun