'The fashion of
moralising in verse,' he said, had been pushed too far, and he proceeded
to startle the orthodox by placing Spenser above Pope. The heresy gave
so much offence, it is said, that he did not venture to bring out his
second volume for twenty-five years. The point made by Warton marks, in
fact, the critical change. The weak side of the Pope school had been the
subordination of the imagination to the logical theory. Poetry tends to
become rhymed prose because the poet like the preacher has to expound
doctrines and to prove by argument. He despises the old mythology and
the romantic symbolism because the theory was obviously absurd to a man
of the world, and to common sense. He believes that Homer was
deliberately conveying an allegory: and an allegory, whether of Homer or
of Spenser, is a roundabout and foolish way of expressing the truth. A
philosopher--and a poem is versified philosophy--should express himself
as simply and directly as possible. But, as soon as you begin to
appreciate the charm of ancient poetry, to be impressed by Scandinavian
Sagas or Highland superstition or Welsh bards, or allow yourself to
enjoy Spenser's idealised knights and ladies in spite of their total
want of common sense, or to appreciate _Paradise Lost_ although you no
longer accept Milton's scheme of theology, it becomes plain that the
specially poetic charm must consist in something else; that it can
appeal to the emotions and the imagination, though the doctrine which it
embodies is as far as possible from convincing your reason. The
discovery has a bearing upon what is called the love of Nature. Even
Thomson and his followers still take the didactic view of Nature. They
are half ashamed of their interest in mere dead objects, but can treat
skies and mountains as a text for discourses upon Natural Theology. But
Collins and Gray and Warton are beginning to perceive that the pleasure
which we receive from a beautiful prospect, whether of a mountain or of
an old abbey, is something which justifies itself and may be expressed
in poetry without tagging a special moral to its tail. Yet the sturdy
common sense represented by Fielding and Johnson is slow to accept this
view, and the romantic view of things has still for him a touch of
sentimentalism and affectation, and indicates the dilettante rather than
the serious thinker, and Pope still represents the orthodox creed though
symptoms of revolt are slowly showing themselves.