Critics, again, have remarked upon the poverty of the rhymes, and
observed that he makes ten rhymes to "wit" and twelve to "sense." The
frequent recurrence of the words is the more awkward because they are
curiously ambiguous. "Wit" was beginning to receive its modern meaning;
but Pope uses it vaguely as sometimes equivalent to intelligence in
general, sometimes to the poetic faculty, and sometimes to the erratic
fancy, which the true poet restrains by sense. Pope would have been
still more puzzled if asked to define precisely what he meant by the
antithesis between nature and art. They are somehow opposed, yet art
turns out to be only "nature methodized." We have indeed a clue for our
guidance; to study nature, we are told, is the same thing as to study
Homer, and Homer should be read day and night, with Virgil for a comment
and Aristotle for an expositor. Nature, good sense, Homer, Virgil, and
the Stagyrite all, it seems, come to much the same thing.
It would be very easy to pick holes in this very loose theory. But it is
better to try to understand the point of view indicated; for, in truth,
Pope is really stating the assumptions which guided his whole career. No
one will accept his position at the present time; but any one who is
incapable of, at least, a provisional sympathy, may as well throw Pope
aside at once, and with Pope most contemporary literature.
The dominant figure in Pope's day was the Wit. The wit--taken
personally--was the man who represented what we now describe by culture
or the spirit of the age.
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