No one would think of making such a claim now, but the detraction which he suffered at the hands of Wordsworth and the Romantics, ought not to make us forget that Pope, though not our greatest, not even perhaps a great, poet is incomparably our most brilliant versifier.

Dryden's strength turns in his work into something more fragile and delicate, polished with infinite care like lacquer, and wrought like filigree work to the last point of conscious and perfected art.

He was not a great thinker; the thoughts which he embodies in his philosophical poems--the _Essay on Man_ and the rest, are almost ludicrously out of proportion to the solemnity of the titles which introduce them, nor does he except very rarely get beyond the conceptions common to the average man when he attempts introspection or meditates on his own destiny.

The reader in search of philosophy will find little to stimulate him and in the facile Deism of the time probably something to smile at.

Pope has no message to us now.