Lord Carlisle on Pope by Thomas de Quincey

[1851.]

Lord Carlisle's recent lecture upon Pope, addressed to an audience of artisans, drew the public attention first of all upon himself -- _that_ was inevitable. No man can depart conspicuously from the usages or the apparent sympathies of his own class, under whatsoever motive, but that of necessity he will awaken for the _immediate_ and the first result of his act an emotion of curiosity. But all curiosity is allied to the comic, and is not an ennobling emotion, either for him who feels it or for him who is its object. A second, however, and more thoughtful consideration of such an act may redeem it from this vulgarizing taint of oddity. Reflection may satisfy us, as in the present case it _did_ satisfy those persons who were best acquainted with Lord Carlisle's public character, that this eccentric step had been adopted, not in ostentation, with any view to its eccentricity, but _in spite_ of its eccentricity, and from impulses of large prospective benignity that would not suffer itself to be defeated by the chances of immediate misconstruction.