[Illustration:  ALEXANDER POPE. From contemporary portrait.]

Some Poems of his Third Period:  “Essay on Man,” and “Satires.”—­The Essay on Man is a philosophical poem with the avowed object of vindicating the ways of God to man.  The entire poem is an amplification of the idea contained in these lines:—­

  “All nature is but art unknown to thee;
  All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
  All discord, harmony not understood;
  All partial evil, universal good. 
  And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,
  One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.”

The chief merit of the poem consists in throwing into polished form many of the views current at the time, so that they may be easily understood.  Before we read very far we come across such old acquaintances as—­

  “The proper study of mankind is man.”

  “An honest man’s the noblest work of God.”

  “Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
  As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
  Yet, seen too oft, familiar with her face,
  We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot and The Dunciad are Pope’s greatest satires.  In The Dunciad, an epic of the dunces, he holds up to ridicule every person and writer who had offended him.  These were in many cases scribblers who had no business with a pen; but in a few instances they were the best scholars of that day.  A great deal of the poem is now very tiresome reading.  Much of it is brutal.  Pope was a powerful agent, as Thackeray says, in rousing that obloquy which has ever since pursued a struggling author. The Dunciad could be more confidently consulted about contemporary literary history, if Pope had avoided such unnecessary misstatements as:—­

  “Earless on high, stood unabash’d De Foe.”

This line is responsible for the current unwarranted belief that the author of Robinson Crusoe lost his ears in the pillory.

General Characteristics.—–­Pope has not strong imagination, a keen feeling for nature, or wide sympathy with man.  Leslie Stephen says:  “Pope never crosses the undefinable, but yet ineffaceable line, which separates true poetry from rhetoric.”  The debate in regard to whether Pope’s verse is ever genuine poetry may not yet be settled to the satisfaction of all; but it is well to recognize the undoubted fact that his couplets still appeal to many readers who love clearness and precision and who are not inclined to wrestle with the hidden meaning of greater poetry.  One of his poems, The Rape of the Lock, has become almost a universal favorite because of its humor, good-natured satire, and entertaining pictures of society in Queen Anne’s time.

He is the poet who best expresses the classical spirit of the eighteenth century.  He excels in satiric and didactic verse.  He expresses his ideas in perfect form, and embodies them in classical couplets, sometimes styled “rocking-horse meter”; but he shows no power of fathoming the emotional depths of the soul.