But accept these conditions,
and much still remains. After all, a wit was still a human being, and
much more nearly related to us than an ancient Greek. Pope's style, when
he is at his best, has the merit of being thoroughly alive; there are no
dead masses of useless verbiage; every excrescence has been carefully
pruned away; slovenly paraphrases and indistinct slurrings over of the
meaning have disappeared. He corrected carefully and scrupulously, as
his own statement implies, not with a view of transferring as large a
portion as possible of his author's meaning to his own verses, but in
order to make the versification as smooth and the sense as transparent
as possible. We have the pleasure which we receive from really polished
oratory; every point is made to tell; if the emphasis is too often
pointed by some showy antithesis, we are at least never uncertain as to
the meaning; and if the versification is often monotonous, it is
articulate and easily caught at first sight. These are the essential
merits of good declamation, and it is in the true declamatory passages
that Pope is at his best. The speeches of his heroes are often
admirable, full of spirit, well balanced and skilfully arranged pieces
of rhetoric--not a mere inorganic series of observations. Undoubtedly
the warriors are a little too epigrammatic and too consciously didactic;
and we feel almost scandalized when they take to downright blows, as
though Walpole and St. John were interrupting a debate in the House of
Commons by fisticuffs.
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