and must content myself
with having denounced what is wrong. There are, I trust, younger
spirits rising up in England, who, escaping the contagion which has
swept away poetry from our literature, will recall it to their
country, such as it once was and may still be.

"In the mean time, the best sign of amendment will be repentance,
and new and frequent editions of Pope and Dryden.

"There will be found as comfortable metaphysics and ten times more
poetry in the 'Essay on Man,' than in the 'Excursion.' If you
search for passion, where is it to be found stronger than in the
epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, or in Palamon and Arcite? Do you
wish for invention, imagination, sublimity, character? seek them in
the Rape of the Lock, the Fables of Dryden, the Ode on Saint
Cecilia's Day, and Absalom and Achitophel: you will discover in
these two poets only, _all_ for which you must ransack innumerable
metres, and God only knows how many _writers_ of the day, without
finding a tittle of the same qualities,--with the addition, too, of
wit, of which the latter have none. I have not, however, forgotten
Thomas Brown the Younger, nor the Fudge Family, nor Whistlecraft;
but that is not wit--it is humour. I will say nothing of the
harmony of Pope and Dryden in comparison, for there is not a living
poet (except Rogers, Gifford, Campbell, and Crabbe) who can write
an heroic couplet. The fact is, that the exquisite beauty of their
versification has withdrawn the public attention from their other
excellences, as the vulgar eye will rest more upon the splendour of
the uniform than the quality of the troops. It is this very
harmony, particularly in Pope, which has raised the vulgar and
atrocious cant against him:--because his versification is perfect,
it is assumed that it is his only perfection; because his truths
are so clear, it is asserted that he has no invention; and because
he is always intelligible, it is taken for granted that he has no
genius. We are sneeringly told that he is the 'Poet of Reason,' as
if this was a reason for his being no poet. Taking passage for
passage, I will undertake to cite more lines teeming with
_imagination_ from Pope than from any two living poets, be they who
they may. To take an instance at random from a species of
composition n