Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/55

study was to be "correct;" to make the expression of his thought sharply defined in form, and completely intelligible; to exhaust in each phrase the content of his own meaning. Now, this is much easier to do if the thought is limited in volume, and Pope was never troubled with more thought than he could express. The words of the great poets came to us charged with suggestion; they convey more than they utter. Pope also can suggest, can hint by innuendo; but the innuendo is definite as the voice of scandal—as here:

Not louder shrieks to threat'ning heaven are cast When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last.

But he is never, at his best, able to do more than give perfect expression to a brilliant observation, so concise and logical, that it would seem to admit perfectly of translation into any language, losing nothing but the clench of rhyme; though here and there some individual colour given to a word might baffle rendering:

Narcissa's nature, tolerably mild, To make a wash, would hardly stew a child.

Yet it sometimes happens that the master of prose can beat him on his own ground. "Who are the critics?" says Mr. Phoebus in Lord Beaconsfield's Lothair. "The critics are those who have failed in literature or in art." That is happier than Pope's lines:

Some are bewildered in the maze of schools, And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools. In search of wit these lose their common sense, And then turn critics in their own defence.