Solitude." His father encouraged his tastes; and Pope's life as an author dates from his sixteenth year, when he wrote his "Pastorals," which were praised far beyond their deserts. His "Essay on Criticism," published when he was twenty-three, is in a higher strain. It has lived, and will continue to live, in spite of the depreciatory estimates of De Quincey and Elwin.

Other works followed in quick succession, the principal of which were his "Messiah," "Odes," "Windsor Forest," "Essay on Man," "Rape of the Lock," the matchless "Eloïsa to Abelard," and "The Dunciad." His most laborious literary undertaking was his translation of Homer. Of this the great scholar, Bentley, remarked, in return for a presentation copy, "It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer." By this work Pope realized above £5000, part of which he laid out in the purchase of a house with five acres at Twickenham, to which he removed with his aged mother in 1715. He was never married.

Pope is a poet of the intellect rather than of nature and the emotions. The nineteenth century raised the question, contested by Bowles on the adverse side, and Roscoe on the other, whether Pope was a poet at all. Wordsworth thought poorly of him; but Wordsworth had no wit, and wit is the predominant element in Pope. "There can be no worse sign for the taste of the times," says Byron, "than the depreciation of Pope, the most perfect of our pocts, and the purest of our moralists. *** In my mind, the highest of all poetry is ethical poetry, as the highest of all earthly objects must be moral truth."

"In spite of the influences," says Mr. John Dennis (1876), "at work during the earlier years of this century, tending to lessen the poetical fame of Pope, his reputation has grown, and is still growing." And Mr. John Ruskin, in his lectures on Art, after referring to Pope as one of the most accomplished artists in literature, adds: "Putting Shakspeare aside as rather the world's than ours, I hold Pope to be the most perfect representative we have, since Chaucer, of the true English mind."

The Rape of the Lock" is a brilliant specimen of the mock-heroic style. The "Essay on Man" is a singularly successful effort to weave ethical philosophy into poe. try. The argument seems directly intended to meet the form of doubt prevalent at the time, and which brought into question not only the divine justice, but the divine existence.

Jealousy of his marvellous success involved Pope in a literary warfare, the evidences of which are abundantly exhibited in his later writings. By some critics his "Dunciad" is regarded as his greatest effort. Full of wit and power as it is, however, it is little read in our day. Such a war upon the dunces should have been beneath the nature and the dignity of a true poet. Pope ought never to have soiled his hands with the dirt of Grub Street.

A constant state of excitement, added to a life of ceaseless study and contemplation, operating on a feeble frame, completely exhausted the powers of Pope before his fifty-seventh year. He complained of his inability to think; yet a short time before his death he said, "I am so certain of the soul's being immortal that I seem to feel it in me, as it were, by intuition." Another

of his dying remarks was, "There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship; and, indeed, friendship itself is only a part of virtue."

Pope's example teaches us that the patient labor of the artist must supplement genius for the production of works of enduring fame. This is a lesson which some even of the popular poets of our day, who "say what they feel without considering what is fitting to be said," very much need.

ODE ON SOLITUDE.

WRITTEN BEFORE POPE WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD.

Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground:

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire;
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire:

Blest, who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away;
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day:

Sound sleep by night, study and ease,
Together mixt, sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus, unlamented, let me die,
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.

FROM "THE ESSAY ON CRITICISM."
PART II.

But most by numbers judge a poet's song;
And smooth or rough with them is right or wrong.
In the bright Muse though thousand charms con-
spire,

Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire,
Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear,
Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.
These equal syllables alone require,
Though oft the ear the open vowels tire;
While expletives their feeble aid do join,
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line :

While they ring round the same unvaried chimes, With sure returns of still-expected rhymes. Where'er you find the "cooling western breeze," In the next line it "whispers through the trees;" If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep," The reader's threatened (not in vain) with "sleep ;" Then at the last and only couplet, fraught

With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song,

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Of man, what see we but his station here
From which to reason, or to which refer?
Through worlds unnumbered though the God be
known,

"Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
He who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe;
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,

along.

Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know

What's roundly smooth or languishingly slow,
And praise the easy vigor of a line

Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence;
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the
main.

TO HENRY ST. JOHN, LORD BOLINGBROKE.
FROM "THE ESSAY ON MAN," EPISTLE I.

Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition and the pride of kings.
Let us (since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man:
A mighty maze! but not without a plan ;
A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot;
Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert, yield;
The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore,
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
Eye Nature's walks, shoot Folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can,
But vindicate the ways of God to man.

Say, first, of God above, or man below,
What can we reason but from what we know?

May tell why Heaven has made us as we are.
But of this frame, the bearings and the ties,
The strong connections, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
Looked through? or can a part contain the whole?
Is the great chain that draws all to agree,
And, drawn, supports, upheld by God or thee?
Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou
find

Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind?
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess
Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less.
Ask of thy mother Earth why oaks are made
Taller and stronger than the weeds they shade;
Or ask of yonder argent fields above
Why Jove's satellités are less than Jove.
Of systems possible, if 'tis confest
That Wisdom Infinite must form the best,
Where all must full, or not coherent be,
And all that rises, rise in due degree;
Then, in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain
There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man:
And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)
Is only this-If God has placed him wrong.
Respecting man, whatever wrong we call
May, must, be right, as relative to all.
In human works, though labored on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;

In God's, one single can its end produce,
Yet serves to second, too, some other use.
So man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal:
"Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

When the proud steed shall know why man restrains

His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains;
When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,
Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god;
Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend
His actions', passions', being's, use and end;
Why doing, suffering; checked, impelled; and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.

See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth, All matter quick, and bursting into birth. Above, how high progressive life may go! Around, how wide! how deep extend below! Vast chain of being, which from God began,Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect-what no eye can see, No glass can reach,-from infinite to thee, From thee to nothing! On superior powers Were we to press, inferior might on ours; Or in the full creation leave a void, Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed: From Nature's chain whatever link you strike, Tenth or ten-thousandth, breaks the chain alike. And if each system in gradation roll, Alike essential to the amazing whole, The least confusion but in one, not all That system only, but the whole, must fall. Let Earth, unbalanced, from her orbit fly; Planets and suns run lawless through the sky: Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled, Being on being wrecked, and world on world; Heaven's whole foundations to their centre nod, And Nature trembles to the throne of God!

All this dread order break? For whom? for thee? Vile worm! O madness! pride! impiety!

What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread, Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head? What if the head, the eye, or ear, repined To serve mere engines to the ruling mind? Just as absurd for any part to claim To be another in this general frame; Just as absurd to mourn the tasks or pains The great directing Mind of all ordains.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul; That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame; Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees; Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent, Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns As the rapt seraph that adores and burns: To him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.

Cease, then, nor order imperfection name;
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakucss, Heaven bestows on thee.
Submit!-in this or any other sphere
Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear;
Safe in the hand of one disposing Power,
Or in the natal or the mortal hour.
All nature is but art unknown to thee;
All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:

And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear-WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.

FROM THE "EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT." "Shut, shut the door, good John," fatigued I said; "Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead!" The dog-star rages! nay, 'tis past a doubt, All Bedlam or Parnassus is let out: Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, They rave, recite, and madden round the land. What walls can guard me, or what shades cau hide?

They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide;

By land, by water, they renew the charge;
They stop the chariot, and they board the barge.
No place is sacred, not the church is free,
Even Sunday shines no Sabbath-day to me;
Then from the Mint' walks forth the man of

rhyme,

Happy to catch me just at dinner-time.

Is there a parson, much be-mused in beer,
A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer,

A clerk, foredoomed his father's soul to cross,
Who pens a stanza when he should engross?
Is there who, locked from ink and paper, scrawls
With desperate charcoal round his darkened walls?
All fly to Twickenham, and in humble strain
Apply to me to keep them mad or vain.
Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws,
Imputes to me and my damned works the cause:
Poor Cornus sees his frantic wife elope,
And curses wit, and poetry, and Pope.

Friend to my life (which did not you prolong, The world had wanted many an idle song),

A place to which insolvent debtors retired to enjoy an illegal protection.

What drop or nostrum can this plague remove?
Or which must end me, a fool's wrath or love?
A dire dilemma! either way I'm sped;

If foes, they write; if friends, they read me dead.
Seized and tied down to judge, how wretched I!
Who can't be silent, and who will not lie.
To laugh were want of goodness and of grace,
And to be grave exceeds all power of face.
I sit with sad civility, I read

With honest anguish and an aching head,
And drop at last, but in unwilling ears,
This saving counsel, "Keep your piece nine years.”

"Nine years!" cries he, who, high in Drury Lane,
Lulled by soft zephyrs through the broken pane,
Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before term ends,
Obliged by hunger and request of friends:
"The piece, you think, is incorrect? why take it;
I'm all submission, what you'd have it, make it."
Three things another's modest wishes bound;
"My friendship, and a prologue, and ten pound."
Pitholeon sends to me; "You know his grace:
I want a patron; ask him for a place."
Pitholeon libelled me,-" But here's a letter
Informs you, sir, 'twas when he knew no better.
Dare you refuse him, Curll invites to dine?
He'll write a journal, or he'll turn divine!"

Bless me! a packet.-""Tis a stranger sues,
A virgin tragedy, an orphan muse."

If I dislike it, "Furies, death, and rage;"
If I approve, "Commend it to the stage."
There (thank my stars) my whole commission ends;
The players and I are, luckily, no friends.

Fired that the house reject him, "Sdeath, I'll print it,

And shame the fools,-your interest, sir, with Lintot."

Lintot, dull rogue, will think your price too much: "Not, sir, if you revise it and retouch." All my demurs but double his attacks: At last he whispers, "Do, and we go snacks." Glad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door, "Sir, let me see your works and you no more!"

Why did I write? What sin to me unknown
Dipped me in ink,-my parents', or my own?
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,

I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came :
I left no calling for this idle trade,
No duty broke, no father disobeyed:

The Muse but served to ease some friend, not wife;
To help me through this long disease, my life,
To second, Arbuthnot! thy art and care,
And teach the being you preserved to bear.

FROM "THE RAPE OF THE LOCK."
CANTO I.

And now, unveiled, the toilet stands displayed,
Each silver vase in mystic order laid.
First, robed in white, the nymph intent adores,
With head uncovered, the cosmetic powers.
A heavenly image in the glass appears,

145

To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears;
The inferior priestess, at her altar's side,
Trembling, begins the sacred rites of Pride.
Unnumbered treasures ope at once, and here
The various offerings of the world appear;
From each she nicely culls with curious toil,
And decks the goddess with the glittering spoil.
This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
The tortoise here and elephant unite,
Transformed to combs, the speckled and the white.
Here files of pins extend their shining rows,
Puffs, powders, patches,' Bibles, billet-doux.
Now awful Beauty puts on all its arms;
The fair each moment rises in her charms,
Repairs her smiles, awakens every grace,
And calls forth all the wonders of her face:
Sees by degrees a purer blush arise,
And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes.
The busy sylphs surround their darling care:
These set the head, and those divide the hair;
Some fold the sleeve, while others plait the gown;
And Betty's praised for labors not her own.

CANTO II.

Nor with more glories, in the ethereal plain,
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames.
Fair nymphs and well-dressed youth around her
shone,

But every eye was fixed on her alone.

On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore; Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those : Favors to none, to all she smiles extends: Oft she rejects, but never once offends. Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike, And, like the sun, they shine on all alike. Yet, graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:

1 Strangely among our grandmothers reckoned ornaments to beauty.

If to her share some female errors fall,
Look on her face, and you'll forget them all.

This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,
Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind
In equal curls, and well conspired to deck
With shining ringlets the smooth ivory neck.
Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,
And mighty hearts are held in slender chains.
With hairy springes we the birds betray,
Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey,
Fair tresses man's imperial race insnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.

THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER.

Father of all! in every age,

In every clime, adored,

By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

Thou great First Cause, least understood,
Who all my sense confined

To know but this, that thou art good,
And that myself am blind;

Yet gave me, in this dark estate,
To see the good from ill;
And, binding nature fast in fate,
Left free the human will:-

What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warus me not to do,
This teach me more than hell to shun,

That more than heaven pursue.

What blessings thy free bounty gives, Let me not cast away;

For God is paid when man receives: To enjoy is to obey.

Yet not to earth's contracted span
Thy goodness let me bound;
Or think thee Lord alone of man,
When thousand worlds are round.

Let not this weak, unknowing hand
Presume thy bolts to throw,
And deal damnation round the land
On each I judge thy foe.

If I am right, thy grace impart Still in the right to stay;

If I am wrong, oh, teach my heart To find that better way.

Save me alike from foolish pride,
Or impious discontent;
At aught thy wisdom has denied,
Or aught thy goodness lent.

Teach me to feel another's woe;
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.

Mean though I am, not wholly so, Since quickened by thy breath; Oh, lead me, wheresoe'er I go,— Through this day's life or death.

This day, be bread and peace my lot: All else beneath the sun

Thou know'st if best bestowed or not, And let thy will be done.

To thee, whose temple is all space,
Whose altar, earth, sea, skies!
One chorus let all being raise;
All nature's incense rise!

THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL. This ode was partly suggested by the following lines, written by the Emperor Adrian:

ADRIANI MORIENTIS.-AD ANIMAM SUAM.

Animula, vagula, blandula,
Hospes Comesque Corporis,
Quæ nunc abibis in loca,
Pallidula, rigida, nudula?
Nec, ut soles, dabis joca.

Pope's lines were composed at the request of Steele, who wrote: "This is to desire of you that you would please to make an ode as of a cheerful, dying spirit; that is to say, the Emperor Adrian's animula vagula put into two or three stanzas for music." Pope replied with the three stanzas below, and says to Steele in a letter, "You have it, as Cowley calls it, warm from the brain. It came to me the first moment I waked this morn. ing."

Vital spark of heavenly flame,
Quit, oh quit this mortal frame!
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying,
Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.

Hark! they whisper; angels say, Sister spirit, come away.