on that the doubt which both Johnson and
Hazlitt felt called upon to refute "was never maintained by a single
person of reputation." Yet there is something very close to such a doubt
implied in the utterances of Coleridge: "If we consider great
exquisiteness of language and sweetness of metre alone, it is impossible
to deny to Pope the character of a delightful writer; but whether he was a
poet, must depend upon our definition of the word.... This, I must say,
that poetry, as distinguished from other modes of composition, does not
rest in metre, and that it is not poetry, if it make no appeal to our
passions or our imagination." (Works, ed. Shedd, IV, 56.) Pope's verse was
made the occasion of a long-winded controversy as to the relative value of
the natural and artificial in poetry, lasting from 1819 to 1825, with
William Bowles and Lord Byron as the principal combatants. Hazlitt
contributed an article to the London Magazine for June, 1821, "Pope, Lord
Byron and Mr. Bowles" (Works, XII, 486-508), in which he pointed out the
fallacies in Byron's position and censured the clerical priggishness of
Bowles in treating of Pope's life. The chief points in the discussion are
best summed up in Prothero's edition of Byron's "Letters and Journals,"
Vol. V, Appendix III.

_If indeed by a great poet we mean_. Cf. Introduction, p. 1.

P. 120. _the pale reflex_. "Romeo and Juliet," iii, 5, 20.

P. 121. _Martha Blount_ (1690-1762), the object of Pope's sentimental
attachment throughout his life.

_In Fortune's ray_. "Troilus and Cressida," i, 3, 47.

_the gnarled oak ... the soft myrtle_. "Faerie Qu.," II, ii, 116-117.

_calm contemplation_. Thomson's "Autumn," 1275.

P. 122. _More subtle web_. "Faerie Queene," II, xii, 77.

P. 123. _from her fair head_. "Rape of the Lock," III, 154.

_Now meet thy fate_. Ibid., V, 87-96.

P. 124. _Lutrin_. The "Lutrin" was a mock-heroic poem (1674-1683) of the
French poet and critic, Nicolas Boileau Despreaux (1636-1711), the
literary dictator of the age of Louis XIV.

_'Tis with our judgments_. "Essay on Criticism," I, 9.

_Still green with bays_. Ibid., I, 181.

P. 125. _the writer's despair_. Cf. Ibid., II, 278:

"No longer now that Golden Age appears,
When Patriarch-wits survived a thousand years:
Now length of fame (our second life) is lost,
And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast:
Our sons their fathers' failing language see,
And such as Chaucer is shall Dryd