Say, what can cause such impotence of mind?
A spark too fickle, or a spouse too kind?
Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please;
With too much spirit to be e'er at ease;
With too much quickness ever to be taught;
With too much thinking to have common thought:
You purchase pain with all that joy can give,
And die of nothing but a rage to live.
There is no end to things in Pope as good and as quotable, and, perhaps one may say, as little known. What everybody does know is the portrait which he drew of "Atticus," and published when Addison was dead.
It is worth while to compare this with Dryden's sketch of Shaftesbury. Achitophel's ill qualities as statesman are first depicted with damning emphasis; but, as a real offset there follows the passage that praises the upright judge. Pope, on the other hand, leads off with his eulogy, saying of Addison what all the world said, and saying it better: then after this ostentation of impartiality comes the subtle onslaught, stab upon stab, with the venom of contemptuous ridicule left in every wound. The passage has been taken, and rightly, for Pope's most typical achievement in poetry: beside it we can put nothing from him but the fiercer attack on Sporus (Lord Hervey), or the close of the Dunciad which celebrates the final triumph of the Dull. These are the things of which we feel that verse is an essential part; that emotion so vibrant demands metrical expression. Such other passages as the eulogy of
