will not readily be made.' Joseph Warton, too, Johnson's
contemporary and friend, while preferring the Romantic School to the
Classical, allows that in that species of poetry wherein Pope excelled
he is superior to all mankind.

In our century Bowles, whose edition of his works provoked prolonged
discussion, in which Campbell, Byron, and the _Quarterly Review_ took
part, places Pope above Dryden. Byron, with more enthusiasm than
judgment, regarded him as the greatest name in our poetry; Scott, with
generous appreciation of a genius so alien to his own, called him a
'true Deacon of the craft,' and at one time proposed editing his works,
a task projected also by Mr. Ruskin, who, putting Shakespeare aside as
rather the world's than ours, holds Pope 'to be the most perfect
representative we have since Chaucer of the true English mind.' 'Matched
on his own ground,' says Mr. Swinburne, 'he never has been nor can be.'
And Mr. Lowell in the same strain observes that 'in his own province he
still stands unapproachably alone.'

What then is Pope's ground? What is this province of which he is the
sole ruler? To a considerable extent the question has been answered in
these pages, but it may be well to sum up with more definiteness what
has been already stated.

In poetry Pope takes a first place in the second order of poets. The
deficiencies which forbid his entrance into the first rank are obvious.
He cannot sing, he has no ear for the subtlest melodies of verse, he is
not a creative poet, and has few of the spirit-stirring thoughts which
the noblest poets scatter through their pages with apparent
unconsciousness. There are no depths in Pope and there are no heights;
he has neither eye for the beauties of Nature, nor ear for her
harmonies, and a primrose was no more to him than it was to Peter Bell.

These are defects indeed, but nothing is more unfair says a great French
critic than to judge notable minds solely by their defects, and in spite
of them Pope's position is so unassailable that the critic must take a
contracted view of the poet's art who questions his right to the title.

His merits are of a kind not likely to be affected by time; a lively
fancy, a power of satire almost unrivalled, and a skill in using words
so consummate that there is no poet, excepting Shakespeare, who has left
his mark upon the language so strongly. The loss to us if Pope's verse
were to become extinct cannot readily be measured. He has said i