itched
them into rhyme would be to insult his mission. Pope's gifts were his
wit, his swift-working mind, added to all the cunning of the craft and
mystery of composition. He could say things better than other men, and
hence it comes that, be he a great poet or a small one, he is a great
writer, an English classic. What is it that constitutes a great writer?
A bold question, certainly, but whenever anyone asks himself a question
in public you may be certain he has provided himself with an answer. I
find mine in the writings of a distinguished neighbour of yours, himself,
though living, an English classic--Cardinal Newman. He says {79}:

'I do not claim for a great author, as such, any great depth of thought,
or breadth of view, or philosophy, or sagacity, or knowledge of human
nature, or experience of human life--though these additional gifts he may
have, and the more he has of them the greater he is,--but I ascribe to
him, as his characteristic gift, in a large sense, the faculty of
expression. He is master of the two-fold [Greek text], the thought and
the word, distinct but inseparable from each other. . . . He always has
the right word for the right idea, and never a word too much. If he is
brief it is because few words suffice; if he is lavish of them, still
each word has its mark, and aids, not embarrasses, the vigorous march of
his elocution. He expresses what all feel, but all cannot say, and his
sayings pass into proverbs amongst his people, and his phrases become
household words and idioms of their daily speech, which is tessellated
with the rich fragments of his language, as we see in foreign lands the
marbles of Roman grandeur worked into the walls and pavements of modern
palaces.' Pope satisfies this definition. He has been dead one hundred
and forty-two years; yet, next to Shakespeare, who has been dead two
hundred and seventy years, and who was nearer to Pope than Pope is to us,
he is the most quoted of English poets, the one who has most enriched our
common speech. Horace used, but has long ceased, to be the poet of
Parliament; for Mr. Gladstone, who, more than any other, has kept alive
in Parliament the scholarly traditions of the past, has never been very
Horatian, preferring, whenever the dignity of the occasion seemed to
demand Latin, the long roll of the hexameter, something out of Virgil or
Lucretius. The new generation of honourable members might not
unprofitably turn their attention to