Note 922 — SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23.
Reading edition
'Pope's talent lay remarkably in what one may naturally enough term the condensation of thoughts. I think no other English poet ever brought so much sense into the same number of lines with equal smoothness, ease, and poetical beauty. Let him who doubts of this peruse his Essay on Man with attention.' Shenstone's Essays on Men and Manners. [Works, 4th edit. ii. 159.] 'He [Gray] approved an observation of Shenstone, that "Pope had the art of condensing a thought."' Nicholls' Reminiscences of Gray, p. 37. And Swift [in his Lines on the death of Dr. Swift], himself a great condenser, says—