The more elaborate poetry of the _Eloisa_ is equally polished
throughout, and too much praise cannot easily be bestowed upon the skill
with which the romantic scenery of the convent is indicated in the
background, and the force with which Pope has given the revulsions of
feeling of his unfortunate heroine from earthly to heavenly love, and
from keen remorse to renewed gusts of overpowering passion. All this may
be said, and without opposing high critical authority. And yet, I must
also say, whether with or without authority, that I, at least, can read
the poems without the least "disposition to cry," and that a single
pathetic touch of Cowper or Wordsworth strikes incomparably deeper. And
if I seek for a reason, it seems to be simply that Pope never crosses
the undefinable, but yet ineffaceable, line which separates true poetry
from rhetoric. The Eloisa ends rather flatly by one of Pope's
characteristic aphorisms. "He best can paint them (the woes, that is, of
Eloisa) who shall feel them most;" and it is characteristic, by the way,
that even in these his most impassioned verses, the lines which one
remembers are of the same epigrammatic stamp, e.g.:
A heap of dust alone remains of thee,
'Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be!
I mourn the lover, not lament the fault.
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot,
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
The worker in moral aphorisms cannot forget himself even in the full
swing of his fervid declamation.
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