each
complete in itself, and each so constructed as to allow of a very small
variety of form, is naturally to receive an impression of monotony.
Pope's antitheses fall into a few common forms, which are repeated over
and over again, and seem copy to each other. And, in a sense, such work
can be very easily imitated. A very inferior artist can obtain most of
his efforts, and all the external qualities of his style. One
ten-syllabled rhyming couplet, with the whole sense strictly confined
within its limits, and allowing only of such variety as follows from
changing the pauses, is undoubtedly very much like another. And
accordingly one may read in any collection of British poets innumerable
pages of versification which--if you do not look too close--are exactly
like Pope. All poets who have any marked style are more or less
imitable; in the present age of revivals, a clever versifier is capable
of adopting the manners of his leading contemporaries, or that of any
poet from Spenser to Shelley or Keats. The quantity of work scarcely
distinguishable from that of the worst passages in Mr. Tennyson, Mr.
Browning, and Mr. Swinburne, seems to be limited only by the supply of
stationery at the disposal of practised performers. That which makes the
imitations of Pope prominent is partly the extent of his sovereignty;
the vast number of writers who confined themselves exclusively to his
style; and partly the fact that what is easily imitable in him is so
conspicuous an element of the whole. The rigid framework which he
adopted is easily definable with mathematical precision. The difference
between the best work of Pope and the ordinary work of his followers is
confined within narrow limits, and not easily perceived at a glance. The
difference between blank verse in the hands of its few masters and in
the hands of a third-rate imitator strikes the ear in every line. Far
more is left to the individual idiosyncrasy. But it does not at all
follow, and in fact it is quite untrue that the distinction which turns
on an apparently insignificant element is therefore unimportant. The
value of all good work ultimately depends on touches so fine as to elude
the sight. And the proof is that although Pope was so constantly
imitated, no later and contemporary writer succeeded in approaching his
excellence. Young, of the _Night Thoughts_, was an extraordinarily
clever writer and talker, even if he did not (as one of his hearers
asserts) eclipse Volt