Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/53

 intellectual ascendency of France, which at this time made itself so strongly felt; for the Frenchman is always social rather than individualist; and, at least in criticism, men had come to take their beliefs from France.

The cardinal point in these beliefs was that literature admitted of rules, which had been first formulated by Aristotle, after him by Horace, and finally by Boileau; and consequently, that the first duty of a writer was to be correct; to conform in poetry not only to the laws of grammar and of rhyme, but to certain other canons of taste hardly less definite. It is true that Milton, in no way touched by French ideas, attached importance to the Aristotelian criticism, and that in his Samson he worked on a Greek model. But then Milton knew Greek a great deal better than Pope knew any language but his own. In nothing is Pope more typical of his school than in constant lip-homage to the ancients whom he had never read. He translated Homer, it is true, but he founded his rendering mainly on other versions; he knew Virgil somewhat, but was evidently deaf and blind to the note of lyricism which pervades Virgil as it pervades the work of all great poets. What he did know was Horace; but all that he saw in Horace was the admirable expression of a sententious philosophy, the work of a "great wit." The word "wit" recurs perpetually in Pope's writings; it represents the goal of his ambitions; and he has defined it in a characteristic couplet: