The perception of this change will enable us to realize Pope's mode of
approaching the problem. The condemnatory epithet most frequently
applied to him is "artificial;" and yet, as I have just said, a modern
translator is surely more artificial, so far as he is attempting a more
radical transformation of his own thoughts into the forms of a past
epoch. But we can easily see in what sense Pope's work fairly deserves
the name. The poets of an older period frankly adopted the classical
mythology without any apparent sense of incongruity. They mix heathen
deities with Christian saints, and the ancient heroes adopt the manners
of chivalrous romance without the slightest difficulty. The freedom was
still granted to the writers of the renaissance. Milton makes Phoebus
and St. Peter discourse in successive stanzas, as if they belonged to
the same pantheon. For poetical purposes the old gods are simply
canonized as Christian saints, as, in a more theological frame of mind,
they are regarded as devils. In the reign of common sense this was no
longer possible. The incongruity was recognized and condemned. The gods
were vanishing under the clearer light, as modern thought began more
consciously to assert its independence. Yet the unreality of the old
mythology is not felt to be any objection to their use as conventional
symbols. Homer's gods, says Pope in his preface, are still the gods of
poetry. Their vitality was nearly extinct; but they were regarded as
convenient personifications of abstract qualities, machines for epic
poetry, or figures to be used in allegory.
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