The French exaggerated the importance of tradition, and so
gave us the classical drama of Racine and Corneille. Walt Whitman
exaggerated the importance of liberty, and so gave us _Leaves of Grass_.
In nearly all periods of literary energy, we find writers rushing to one
or other of these extremes. Either they declare that the classics are
perfect and cannot be surpassed but only imitated; or, like the Futurists,
they want to burn the classics and release the spirit of man for new
adventures. It is all a prolonged duel between reaction and revolution,
and the wise man of genius doing his best, like a Liberal, to bring the
two opponents to terms.

Much of the interest of Young's book is due to the fact that in an age of
reaction he came out on the revolutionary side. There was seldom a time at
which the classics were more slavishly idolized and imitated. Miss Morley
quotes from Pope the saying that "all that is left us is to recommend our
productions by the imitation of the ancients." Young threw all his
eloquence on the opposite side. He uttered the bold paradox: "The less we
copy the renowned ancients, we shall resemble them the more." "Become a
noble collateral," he advised, "not a humble descendant from them. Let us
build our compositions in the spirit, and in the taste, of the ancients,
but not with their materials. Thus will they resemble the structures of
Pericles at Athens, which Plutarch commends for having had an air of
antiquity as soon as they were built." He refuses to believe that the
moderns are necessarily inferior to the ancients. If they are inferior, it
is because they plagiarize from the ancients instead of emulating them.
"If ancients and moderns," he declares, "were no longer considered as
masters, and pupils, but as hard-matched rivals for renown, then moderns,
by the longevity of their labours, might one day become ancients
themselves."

He deplores the fact that Pope should have been so content to indenture
his genius to the work of translation and imitation:

Though we stand much obliged to him for giving us an Homer, yet had
he doubled our obligation by giving us--a Pope. He had a strong
imagination and the true sublime? That granted, we might have had
two Homers instead of one, if longer had been his life; for I heard
the dying swan talk over an epic plan a few weeks before his
decease.

For ourselves, we hold that Pope showed himself to be as original as needs
be in