Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/493

Rh perplexing anomaly under the common laws of nature, by showing how it has grown to be what it is, and how it can with more or less of self-illusion reconcile itself to itself. The one great section to which I think less than justice has been done is that of the Pope, with its awful prelude:—

Ere I confirm or quash the Trial here Of Guido Franceschini and his friends, Read,—how there was a ghastly Trial once Of a dead man by a live man, and both, Popes: Thus—in the antique penman's very phrase."

I know nothing that surpasses the wisdom, the true saintliness, the invincible firmness of the great good old Pope in this decisive monologue.

An author whom we should love for that sole sentence, wrote of his wife, "To love her was a liberal education." It would be scarcely rash to say the like of this one greatest work of our poet, who has wrought so much else that is only less great.