Nevertheless, it is probable
enough that Dryden had moving in his thoughts a relation of the word
_majesty_, which, if developed, would have done justice to his meaning. It
was, perhaps, the decorum and sustained dignity of the _composition_--the
workmanship apart from the native grandeur of the materials--the majestic
style of the artistic treatment as distinguished from the original
creative power--which Dryden, the translator of the Roman poet, familiar
therefore with his weakness and with his strength, meant in this place to
predicate as characteristically observable in Virgil.
FOOTNOTE
[1] '_Six planets_;'--No more had then been discovered.
POPE'S RETORT UPON ADDISON.
There is nothing extraordinary, or that could merit a special notice, in a
simple case of oversight, or in a blunder, though emanating from the
greatest of poets. But such a case challenges and forces our attention,
when we know that the particular passage in which it occurs was wrought
and burnished with excessive pains; or (which in this case is also known)
when that particular passage is pushed into singular prominence as having
obtained a singular success. In no part of his poetic mission did Pope so
fascinate the gaze of his contemporaries as in his functions of satirist;
which functions, in his latter years, absorbed all other functions. And
one reason, I believe, why it was that the interest about Pope decayed so
rapidly after his death (an accident somewhere noticed by Wordsworth),
must be sought in the fact, that the most stinging of his personal
allusions, by which he had given salt to his later writings, were
continually losing their edge, and sometimes their intelligibility, as
Pope's own contemporary generation was dying off.
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