I confess that I come to the treatment of Pope with diffidence. I was brought up in the old superstition that he was the greatest poet that ever lived, and when I came to find that I had instincts of my own, and my mind was brought in contact with the apostles of a more esoteric doctrine of poetry, I felt that ardent desire for smashing the idols I had been brought up to worship, without any regard to their artistic beauty, which characterizes youthful zeal. What was it to me that Pope was a master of style? I felt, as Addison says in his “Freeholder” in answering an argument in favor of the Pretender because he could speak English and George I could not, “that I did not wish to be tyrannized over in the best English that was ever spoken.” There was a time when I could not read Pope, but disliked him by instinct, as old Roger Ascham seems to have felt about Italy when he says: “I was once in Italy myself, but I thank God my abode there was only nine days.” But Pope fills a very important place in the history of English poetry, and must be studied by every one who would come to a clear knowledge of it. I have since read every line that Pope ever wrote, and every letter written by or to him, and that more than once. If I have not come to the conclusion that he is the greatest of poets, I believe I am at least in a condition to allow him every merit that is fairly his. I have said that Pope as a literary man represents precision and grace of expression; but, as a fact, he represents something more--nothing less, namely, than one of those external controversies of taste which will last as long as the Imagination and Understanding divide men between them. It is not a matter to be settled by any amount of argument or demonstration. Men are born Popists or Wordsworthians, Lockists or Kantists; and there is nothing more to be said of the matter. We do not hear that the green spectacles persuaded the horse into thinking that shavings were grass. That reader is happiest whose mind is broad enough to enjoy the natural school for its nature and the artificial for its artificiality, provided they be only good of their kind. At any rate, we must allow that a man who can produce one perfect work is either a great genius or a very lucky one. As far as we who read are concerned, it is of secondary importance which. And Pope has done this in the “Rape of the Lock.” For wit, fancy, invention, and keeping, it has never been surpassed. I do not say that there is in it poetry of the highest order, or that Pope is a poet whom any one would choose as the companion of his best hours. There is no inspiration in it, no trumpet call; but for pure entertainment it is unmatched.