Pope has been variously estimated. To his generation he seemed the greatest of English poets. This position was questioned by Joseph Warton, who, in his Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope (vol. i., 1751), placed Pope below Spenser. And the later romantics, who laid the stress on the matter of poetry rather than on its technique, had doubts as to whether Pope was a poet at all. On his rank, a memor able controversy was started by W. L. Bowles in 1806. If, in the language of Wordsworth, "poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge," uttered in impassioned language, there is little poetry in Pope. Be was hardly successful in Eloisa and the Unfortunate Lady, his two experi ments in pathos. They are only the rhetoric of emotion. Likewise the Rape of the Lock is a poem of the fancy rather than of the imagina tion. Without deep feeling or great imagination, Pope yet possessed rare excellences. In execu tion be could be faultless. He evoked the melo dies of the heroic couplet, and molded it to the expression of keen wit and epigram. His pro
verbial philosophy, so often quoted—as "A little learning is a dang'rous thing"—is likely to be false or only half true, for Pope himself was no thinker; but in the realm of satire, as represented by the Imitations of Horace, he is still supreme among the English poets.
Collective editions of Pope's Works have been edited by W. Warburton (1751), Joseph Warton (1797), W. L. Bowles (1806) , W. Roscoe (1824), and by W. Elwin and W. J. Courthope (10 vols., London, 1871-89). The last edition, by far the best, has superseded all others. Consult also the Concordance to Pope's Works, by Abbott (Lon don, 18751; Life, by R. Carruthers I Bohn's Li brary, lb.. 1857) and by L. Stephen (English Men of Letters, ib., 1880) ; and The Aye of Pope, by Dennis (ib.. 1894). For poems alone, consult the convenient Globe edition (London and New York, 1869), and the edition in three volumes, with memoir by Dennis (London, 1891).