As a poet his general position is easy to de fine. He was not a great lyrist; he was not a profound thinker ; but he is a supreme artificer. Borrowing the heroic couplet from Dryden, he brought it, as the medium for didactic and satirical verse, to a pitch of perfection which has never been surpassed, though it has some times been made monotonous by imitation. He could not, as we have implied, originate; but he could decorate to any extent. Granted the theme, he could develop it; he could embroider it supremely; he could lend it every advantage in the way of condensed perspicuous and epi grammatic exposition. The major part of his work is a triumphant exemplification of Addi son's dictum that °Wit and fine Writing doth not consist so much in advancing Things that are new, as in giving Things that are known an agreeable Turn.° This was Pope's chief function. With inspiration, with the unat tempted or unimagined in poetry, he had small concern. But he could express, in a given metrical form, and with faultless lucidity and finish, the best floating ideas in circulation at the time of writing. His gifts of wit and irony led him inevitably in the direction of the satire; and his high-water mark is his (Epistle to Ar buthnot,' which exhibits his varied and excep tional powers in their fullest diversity.
There are several early lives of Pope of which that by Johnson (