Perhaps some advocate of Free Trade
might try upon a modern audience the lines in which Pope expresses his
aspiration in a footnote that London may one day become a "FREE PORT."
There is at least not one antiquated or obscure phrase in the whole.
Here are half-a-dozen lines:--
The time shall come, when, free as seas and wind,
Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind,
Whole nations enter with each swelling tide,
And seas but join the regions they divide;
Earth's distant ends our glory shall behold,
And the new world launch forth to seek the old.
In the next few years Pope found other themes for the display of his
declamatory powers. Of the _Temple of Fame_ (1715), a frigid imitation
of Chaucer, I need only say that it is one of Pope's least successful
performances; but I must notice more fully two rhetorical poems which
appeared in 1717. These were the _Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate
Lady_ and the _Eloisa to Abelard_. Both poems, and especially the last,
have received the warmest praises from Pope's critics, and even from
critics who were most opposed to his school. They are, in fact, his
chief performances of the sentimental kind. Written in his youth, and
yet when his powers of versification had reached their fullest maturity,
they represent an element generally absent from his poetry. Pope was at
the period in which, if ever, a poet should sing of love, and in which
we expect the richest glow and fervour of youthful imagination.
Pages:
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53