It is not, however, for me to speak ill of Pope or his great disciples, above all, when they possess pathos and naturalness like Goldsmith:  after the greatest they are perhaps the most agreeable writers and the poets best fitted to add charm to life.  Once when Lord Bolingbroke was writing to Swift, Pope added a postscript, in which he said—­“I think some advantage would result to our age, if we three spent three years together.”  Men who, without boasting, have the right to say such things must never be spoken of lightly:  the fortunate ages, when men of talent could propose such things, then no chimera, are rather to be envied.  The ages called by the name of Louis Xiv. or of Queen Anne are, in the dispassionate sense of the word, the only true classical ages, those which offer protection and a favourable climate to real talent.  We know only to well how in our untrammelled times, through the instability and storminess of the age, talents are lost and dissipated.  Nevertheless, let us acknowledge our age’s part and superiority in greatness.  True and sovereign genius triumphs over the very difficulties that cause others to fail:  Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton were able to attain their height and produce their imperishable works in spite of obstacles, hardships and tempests.  Byron’s opinion of Pope has been much discussed, and the explanation of it sought in the kind of contradiction by which the singer of Don Juan and Childe Harold extolled the purely classical school and pronounced it the only good one, while himself acting so differently.  Goethe spoke the truth on that point when he remarked that Byron, great by the flow and source of poetry, feared that Shakespeare was more powerful than himself in the creation and realisation of his characters.  “He would have liked to deny it; the elevation so free from egoism irritated him; he felt when near it that he could not display himself at ease.  He never denied Pope, because he did not fear him; he knew that Pope was only a low wall by his side.”

If, as Byron desired, Pope’s school had kept the supremacy and a sort of honorary empire in the past, Byron would have been the first and only poet in his particular style; the height of Pope’s wall shuts out Shakespeare’s great figure from sight, whereas when Shakespeare reigns and rules in all his greatness, Byron is only second.

In France there was no great classic before the age of Louis Xiv.; the Dantes and Shakespeares, the early authorities to whom, in times of emancipation, men sooner or later return, were wanting.  There were mere sketches of great poets, like Mathurin Regnier, like Rabelais, without any ideal, without the depth of emotion and the seriousness which canonises.  Montaigne was a kind of premature classic, of the family of Horace, but for want of worthy surroundings, like a spoiled child, he gave himself up to the unbridled fancies of his style and humour.  Hence it happened that France, less than any other nation, found in her old authors a right to demand vehemently at a certain time literary liberty and freedom, and that it was more difficult for her, in enfranchising herself, to remain classical.  However, with Moliere and La Fontaine among her classics of the great period, nothing could justly be refused to those who possessed courage and ability.