Certain traits have perhaps
been made more noticeable than before, but those essential elements of
character which would define, explain, reconcile, and enable us to
conceive the combination as a unit, have eluded observation.
This is, of course, a natural result of the gaps and contradictions in
the evidence, the lack especially of those minute details which are not
only necessary links, but often the most suggestive features, in a
record of facts or delineation of character. And if it be urged that a
deeper insight would have in some measure supplied this deficiency, the
answer can only be that we have no right to expect from any man the
exercise of powers which he does not possess or affect to
possess--powers which, in a case like this, would need to be of the
finest and rarest kind. We may, however, fairly regret that Mr. Stephen
has not availed himself of a resource that lay within his reach for
making the accessories of his picture more brilliant and effective,
with the possible incidental result of throwing a stronger light on the
principal figure. Whatever else may be debated about Pope, no one would
deny that he was pre-eminently the man of his time--not only its most
conspicuous figure, but the very embodiment of its ideals.
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