for the translator, it need shrink from no other. There is something exceedingly tender and beautiful in the sound of the concluding lines: "If ever chance two wandering lovers brings To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs," &c. The Essay on Man is not Pope's best work. It is a theory which Bolingbroke is supposed to have given him, and which he expanded into verse. But he spins the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." All that he says, "the very words, and to the self-same tune," would prove just as well that whatever is, is wrong, as that whatever is, is right. The Dunciad has splendid passages, but in general it is dull, heavy, and mechanical. The sarcasm already quoted on Settle, the Lord Mayor's poet (for at that time there was a city as well as a court poet)— "Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er, is the finest inversion of immortality conceivable. It is even better than his serious apostrophe to the great heirs of glory, the triumphant bards of antiquity! The finest burst of severe moral invective in all Pope, is the prophetical conclusion of the epilogue to the Satires: "Virtue may chuse the high or low degree, 'Tis just alike to virtue and to me; Dwell in a monk, or light upon a king, She's still the same belov'd, contented thing. Mounts the tribunal, lifts her scarlet head, Hear her black trumpet through the land proclaim, In soldier, churchman, patriot, man in pow'r, See all our nobles begging to be slaves! At crimes that 'scape or triumph o'er the law; Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain) Show there was one who held it in disdain." His Satires are not, in general, so good as his Epistles. His enmity is effeminate and petulant from a sense of weakness, as his friendship was tender from a sense of gratitude. I do not like, for instance, his character of Chartres, or his characters of women. His delicacy often borders upon sickliness; his fastidiousness makes others fastidious. But his compliments are divine; they are equal in value to a house or an estate. Take the following. In addressing Lord Mansfield, he speaks of the grave as a scene: "Where Murray, long enough his country's pride, To Bolingbroke he says: "Why rail they then if but one wreath of mine, Oh all-accomplish'd St. John, deck thy shrine?" Again, he has bequeathed this praise to Lord Cornbury: "Despise low thoughts, low gains: Be virtuous and be happy for your pains." One would think (though there is no knowing) that a descendant of this nobleman, if there be such a person living, could hardly be guilty of a mean or paltry action. The finest piece of personal satire in Pope (perhaps in the world) is his character of Addison; and this, it may be observed, is of a mixed kind, made up of his respect for the man, and a cutting sense of his failings. The other finest one is that of Buckingham, and the best part of that is the pleasurable : 66 - Alas! how changed from him, That life of pleasure and that soul of whim: Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love!” Among his happiest and most inimitable effusions are the Epistles to Arbuthnot and to Jervas the painter: amiable patterns of the delightful unconcerned life, blending ease with dignity, which poets and painters then led. Thus he says to Arbuthnot: "Why did I write? What sin to me unknown 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 disobey'd: The muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife; But why then publish? Granville the polite And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before) Happy my studies, when by these approv'd! I cannot help giving also the conclusion of the Epistle to Jervas: "Oh! lasting as those colours may they shine, And shall we cut ourselves off from beauties like these with a theory? Shall we shut up our books, and seal up our senses, to please the dull spite and inordinate vanity of those "who have eyes, but they see not-cars, but they hear not―and understandings, but they understand not," and go about asking our blind guides whether Pope was a poet or not? It will never do. Such persons, when you point out to them a fine passage in Pope, turn it off to something of the same sort in some other writer. Thus they say that the line, "I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came," is pretty, but taken from that of Ovid-Et quum conabar scribere, versus erat. They are safe in this mode of criticism: there is no danger of anyone's tracing their writings to the classics. Pope's letters and prose writings neither take away from nor add to his poetical reputation. There is, occasionally, a littleness of manner and an unnecessary degree of caution. He appears anxious to say a good thing in every word, as well as every sentence. They, however, give a very favourable idea of his moral character in all respects; and his letters to Atterbury, in his disgrace and exile, do equal honour to both. If I had to choose, there are one or two persons-and but one or two-that I should like to have been better than Pope! Dryden was a better prose-writer, and a bolder and more varied versifier than Pope. He was a more vigorous thinker, a more correct and logical declaimer, and had more of what may be called strength of mind than Pope; but he had not the same refinement and delicacy of feeling. Dryden's eloquence and spirit were possessed in a higher degree by others, and in nearly the same degree by Pope himself; but that by which Pope was distinguished was an essence which he alone possessed, and of incomparable value on that sole account. Dryden's Epistles are excellent, but inferior to Pope's, though they appear (particularly the admirable one to Congreve) to have been the model on which the latter formed his. His Satires arc better than Pope's. His Absalom and Achitophel is superior, both in force of invective and discrimination of character, to anything of Pope's in the same way. The character of Achitophel is very fine, and breathes, if not a sincere love for virtue, a strong spirit of indignation against vice. MacFlecknoe is the origin of the idea of the Dunciad; but it is less elaborately constructed, less feeble, and less heavy. The difference between Pope's satirical portraits and Dryden's appears to be this in a good measure, that Dryden seems to grapple with his antagonists, and to describe real persons; Pope seems to refine upon them in his own mind, and to make them out just what he pleases, till they are not real characters, but the mere drivelling effusions of his |