I am not
sure that he would not stand higher; it is the corner-stone of his
glory: without it, his odes would be insufficient for his fame. The
depreciation of Pope is partly founded upon a false idea of the
dignity of his order of poetry, to which he has partly contributed by
the ingenuous boast,

"That not in fancy's maze he wandered long,
But _stoop'd_ to truth, and moralised his song."

He should have written "rose to truth." In my mind, the highest of
all poetry is ethical poetry, as the highest of all earthly objects
must be moral truth. Religion does not make a part of my subject; it
is something beyond human powers, and has failed in all human hands
except Milton's and Dante's, and even Dante's powers are involved in
his delineation of human passions, though in supernatural
circumstances. What made Socrates the greatest of men? His moral
truth--his ethics. What proved Jesus Christ the Son of God hardly
less than his miracles? His moral precepts. And if ethics have made a
philosopher the first of men, and have not been disdained as an
adjunct to his Gospel by the Deity himself, are we to be told that
ethical poetry, or didactic poetry, or by whatever name you term it,
whose object is to make men better and wiser, is not the _very first
order_ of poetry; and are we to be told this too by one of the
priesthood? It requires more mind, more wisdom, more power, than all
the "forests" that ever were "walked" for their "description," and
all the epics that ever were founded upon fields of battle. The
Georgics are indisputably, and, I believe, _undisputedly_ even a
finer poem than the AEneid. Virgil knew this; he did not order _them_
to be burnt.

"The proper study of mankind is man."

It is the fashion of the day to lay great stress upon what they call
"imagination" and "invention," the two commonest of qualities: an
Irish peasant with a little whiskey in his head will imagine and
invent more than would furnish forth a modern poem. If Lucretius had
not been spoiled by the Epicurean system, we should have had a far
superior poem to any now in existence. As mere poetry, it is the
first of Latin poems. What then has ruined it? His ethics. Pope has
not this defect; his moral is as pure as his poetry is glorious.

In speaking of artificial objects, I have omitted to touch upon one
which I will now mention. Cannon may be presumed to be as highly
poetical as art can make her objects. Mr. Bowles will, perhaps, tell