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The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope
The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope Author:Alexander Pope, Henry Walcott Boynton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WINDSOR-FOREST, PRELIMINARY REMARKS. Thk poem of Windsor-Forest, although properly ranked ns descriptive, contains in itself strong indications that the po... more »wers of the author were calculated for more elevated sobjects, and loftier flights. No sooner has he announced the scene of his poem, than he breaks through the narrow bounds by which he is apparently confined, and engages in an historical deduction of the effects produced by the tyranny of the early English kings; terminating in the establishment of liberty, and the diffusion of national happiness. To this subject he recurs towards the close ef his poem, where he brings down his historical notices to the reign of Queen Anne, and celebrates the peace of Utrecht, then just concluded. Many other passages indicate the attention ho had paid to graver and more important subjects, wiiich soon superseded his lighter performances, and showed, That not in Fancy's maze Tie wanderM long, But stoop'd to truth, and moralized bis song. Dr. Johnson considers that " the parts of Winior-Foret which deserve least praise, are those which are added to enliven the stillness of the scene—the appearance of Father Thames, and the transformation of Lodona." To admit that there was any force or troth in these observations, would be to deprive poetry of one of her greatest auxiliaries. That such representations are unnatural, must, in a strict sense, be allowed: but poetry employs for her purpose not only what exists in nature, but what may, in possibility, be supposed to exist; and to deprive her of this power, is to prohibit her flights altogether. Neither Caliban nor Ariel exist in nature, and, in Johnson's phraseology, may therefore be said to be unnatural: but, although, not in nature, they are not contradictory to our conceptions of wha...« less