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CHRISTOPHER NORTH ON POPE1

[From Noctes Ambrosianae, March, 1825]

Tickler. Pope was one of the most amiable men that ever lived. Fine and delicate as were the temper and temperament of his genius, he had a heart capable of the warmest human affection. He was indeed a loving creature.

North. Come, come, Timothy, you know you were sorely cut an hour or two ago-so do not attempt characteristics. But, after all, Bowles does not say that Pope was unamiable.

Tickler. Yes, he does-that is to say, no man can read, even now, all that he has written about Pope, without thinking on the whole, somewhat indifferently of the man Pope. It is for this I abuse our friend Bowles.

Shepherd. Ay, ay-I recollect now some of the havers o' Boll's about the Blounts,-Martha and Theresa, I think you call them. Puir wee bit hunched-backed, windle-straelegged, gleg-eed, clever, acute, ingenious, sateerical, weelinformed, warm-hearted, real philosophical, and maist poetical creature, wi' his sounding translation o' a' Homer's works, that reads just like an original War-Yepic,-His Yessay on Man that, in spite o' what a set o' ignoramuses o' theological critics say about Bolingbroke and Croussass, and heterodoxy and atheism, and like haven, is just-ane o' the best moral discourses that ever I heard in or out o' the poupit,-His yepistles about the Passions, and sic like, in the whilk he goes baith deep and high, far deeper and higher baith than mony a modern poet, who must needs be either in a diving-bell or a balloon, His Rape o' the Lock o' Hair, wi' a' these Sylphs floating about in the machinery o' the Rosicrucian Philosophism, just perfectly yelegant and gracefu', and as gude, in their way, as onything o' my ain about fairies, either in the Queen's Wake or Queen Hynde,-His Louisa to Abelard is, as I said before, coorse in the subject-matter, but, O sirs! powerfu' and pathetic in execution—and sic a perfect spate o' versification! His unfortunate lady, who sticked hersel 1 A Discussion of the Edition by Bowles.

for love wi' a drawn sword, and was afterwards seen as a ghost, dim-beckoning through the shade-a verra poetical thocht surely, and full both of terror and pity. . .

North. Pope's poetry is full of nature, at least of what I have been in the constant habit of accounting nature for the last threescore and ten years. But (thank you, James, that snuff is really delicious) leaving nature and art, and all that sort of thing, I wish to ask a single question: what poet of this age, with the exception, perhaps, of Byron, can be justly said, when put in comparison with Pope, to have written the English language at all. . .

Tickler. What would become of Bowles himself, with all his elegance, pathos, and true feeling? Oh! dear me, James, what a dull, dozing, disjointed, dawdling, dowdy of a drawe would be his muse, in her very best voice and tune, when called upon to get up and sing a solo after the sweet and strong singer of Twickenham !

North. Or Wordsworth-with his eternal-Here we go up, and up, and up, and here we go down, down, and here we go roundabout, roundabout!-Look at the nerveless laxity of his Excursion !-What interminable prosing!-The language is out of condition-fat and fozy, thick-winded, purfled and plethoric. Can he be compared with Pope ?Fie on't no, no, no !-Pugh, pugh!

Tickler. Southey-Coleridge-Moore ?

North. No; not one of them. They are all eloquent, diffusive, rich, lavish, generous, prodigal of their words. But so are they all deficient in sense, muscle, sinew, thews, ribs, spine. Pope, as an artist, beats them hollow. Catch him twaddling.

Tickler. It is a bad sign of the intellect of an age to depreciate the genius of a country's classics. But the attempt covers such critics with shame, and undying ridicule pursues them and their abettors. The Lake Poets began this senseless clamour against the genius of Pope.

ON BYRON

[From Noctes Ambrosianae, October, 1825]

are

North. People say, James, that Byron's tragedies failures. Fools! Is Cain, the dark, dim, disturbed, insane, hell-haunted Cain, a failure? Is Sardanapalus, the passionate, princely, philosophical, joy-cheated, throne-wearied voluptuary, a failure? Is Heaven and Earth, that magnificent confusion of two worlds, in which mortal beings mingle in love and hate, joy and despair, with immortal-the children of the dust claiming alliance with the radiant progeny of the skies, till man and angel seem to partake of one divine being, and to be essences eternal in bliss or bale-is Heaven and Earth, I ask you, James, a failure? If so, then Appollo has stopt payment-promising a dividend of one shilling in the poundand all concerned in that house are bankrupts.

Tickler. You have nobly-gloriously vindicated Byron, North, and in doing so, have vindicated the moral and intellectual character of our country. Miserable and pernicious creed, that holds possible the lasting and intimate union of the first, purest, highest, noblest, and most celestial powers of soul and spirit, with confirmed appetencies, foul and degrading lust, cowardice, cruelty, meanness, hypocrisy, avarice, and impiety! You,-in a strong attempt made to hold up to execration the nature of Byron as deformed by all these hideous vices,-you, my friend, reverently unveiled the countenance of the mighty dead, and the lineaments struck remorse into the heart of every asperser.

ON DR. JOHNSON

[From Noctes Ambrosianae, April, 1829]

North. I forgot old Sam-a jewel rough set, yet shining like a star, and though sand-blind by nature, and bigoted by Education, one of the truly great men of England, and “her men are of men the chief," alike in the dominions of the understanding, the reason, the passions, and the imagination. No prig shall ever persuade me that Rasselas is not a noble performance-in design and execution. Never were the expenses of a mother's funeral more gloriously defrayed by son, than the funeral of Samuel Johnson's mother by the price of Rasselas, written for the pious purpose of laying her head decently and honourably in the dust.

Shepherd. Ay, that was pittin' literature and genius to a glorious purpose indeed; and therefore nature and religion smiled on the wark, and have stamped it with immortality.

North. Samuel was seventy years old when he wrote the Lives of the Poets.

Shepherd. What a fine old buck! No unlike yoursel'. North. Would it were so! He had his prejudicies, and his partialities, and his bigotries, and his blindnesses,-but on the same fruit-tree you see shrivelled pears or apples on the same branch with jargonelles or golden pippins worthy of paradise. Which would ye show to the Horticultural Society as a fair specimen of the tree?

Shepherd. Good, kit, good-philosophically picturesque. (Mimicking the old man's voice and manner.) North. Show me the critique that beats his on Pope, and on Dryden-nay, even on Milton; and hang me if you may not read his essay on Shakespeare even after having read Charles Lamb, or heard Coleridge, with increased admiration of the powers of all three, and of their insight, through different avenues, and as it might seem almost with different bodily and mental organs, into Shakespeare's "old exhausted," and his "new imagined worlds." He was a critic and a moralist who would have been wholly wise, had he not been

partly-constitutionally insane. For there is blood in the brain, James-even in the organ-the vital principle of all our "eagle-winged raptures"; and there was a taint of the black drop of melancholy in his.

Shepherd. Wheesht-wheesht-let us keep aff that subject. All men ever I knew are mad; and but for that law o' natur, never, never, in this warld had there been a Noctes Ambrosianae.

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