Dear madam, had you but the spirit to tease, Dear madam, whene'er of a barrack I think, At Hamilton's Bawn, and the troop is arrived; Go bring me my smock, and leave off your prate, O, la! the sweet gentleman, look in his face; To shorten my tale (for I hate a long story), The parsons for envy are ready to burst; Never since I was born did I hear so much wit, Thus merciless Hannah ran on in her talk, For the right holds the sword, and the left holds the Then turning to Hannah and forcing a frown, Then flourishes thrice his sword in the air, Hist, hussy, I think I hear somebody coming'- Although it was plain in her heart she was glad, ALEXANDER POPE. United with Swift in friendship and in fame, but possessing far higher powers as a poet, and more refined taste as a satirist, was ALEXANDER POPE, born in London May 22, 1688. His father, a linen draper, having acquired an independent fortune, retired to Binfield, in Windsor Forest. He was a Roman Catholic, and the young poet was partly 1 Dr Jenny, a clergyman in the neighbourhood. educated by the family priest. He was afterwards sent to a Catholic seminary at Twyford, near Win A. Pope chester, where he lampooned his teacher, was severely punished, and afterwards taken home by his parents. He educated himself, and attended no school after his twelfth year! The whole of his early life was that of a severe student. He was a poet in his infancy. As yet a child, and all unknown to fame, I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. The writings of Dryden became the more particular object of his admiration, and he prevailed upon a friend to introduce him to Will's coffeehouse, which Dryden then frequented, that he might have the gratification of seeing an author whom he so enthusiastically admired. Pope was then not more than twelve years of age. He wrote, but afterwards destroyed, various dramatic pieces, and at the age of sixteen composed his Pastorals, and his imitations of Chaucer. He soon became acquainted with most of the eminent persons of the day both in politics and literature. In 1711 appeared his Essay on Criticism, unquestionably the finest piece of argumentative and reasoning poetry in the English language. The work is said to have been composed two years before publication, when Pope was only twenty-one. The ripeness of judgment which it displays is truly marvellous. Addison commended the Essay' warmly in the Spectator, and it instantly rose into great popularity. The style of Pope was now formed and complete. His versification was that of his master, Dryden, but he gave the heroic couplet a peculiar terseness, correctness, and melody. The essay was shortly afterwards followed by the Rape of the Lock. The stealing of a lock of hair from a beauty of the day, Miss Arabella Fermor, by her lover, Lord Petre, was taken seriously, and caused an estrangement between the families, and Pope wrote his poem to make a jest of the affair, and laugh them together again.' In this he did not succeed, but he added greatly to his reputation by the effort. The machinery of the poem, founded upon the Rosicrucian theory, that the elements are inhabited by spirits, which they called sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, and salamanders, was added at the suggestion of Dr Garth and some of his friends. Sylphs had been previously mentioned as invisible attendants on the fair, and the idea is shadowed out in Shakspeare's 'Ariel,' and the amusements of the fairies in the Midsummer Night's Dream.' But Pope has blended the most delicate satire with the most lively fancy, and produced the finest and most brilliant mock-heroic poem in the world. It is,' says Johnson, 'the most airy, the most ingenious, and the most delightful of all Pope's compositions.' The Temple of Fame and the Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady, were next published; and in 1713 appeared his Windsor Forest, which was chiefly written so early as 1704. The latter was evidently founded on Denham's 'Cooper's Hill,' which it far excels. Pope was, properly speaking, no mere descriptive poet. He made the picturesque subservient to views of historical events, or to sketches of life and morals. But most of the Windsor Forest' being composed in his earlier years, amidst the shades of those noble woods which he selected for the theme of his verse, there is in this poem a greater display of sympathy with external nature and rural objects than in any of his other works. The lawns and glades of the forest, the russet plains, and blue hills, and even the purple dyes' of the wild heath,' had struck his young imagination. His account of the dying pheasant is a finished picture See! from the brake the whirring pheasant springs, So Zembla's rocks (the beauteous work of frost) Pope now commenced his translation of the Iliad. At first the gigantic task oppressed him with its difficulty, but he grew more familiar with Homer's images and expressions, and in a short time was able to despatch fifty verses a-day. Great part of the manuscript was written upon the backs and covers of letters, evincing that it was not without reason he was called paper-sparing Pope. The poet obtained a clear sum of £5320, 4s. by this translation: his exclamation And thanks to Homer, since I live and thrive, was, however, scarcely just, if we consider that this large sum was in fact a benevolence' from the upper classes of society, good-naturedly designed to reward his literary merit. The fame of Pope was not advanced in an equal degree with his fortune by his labours as a translator. The 'fatal facility' of his rhyme, the additional false ornaments which he imparted Where grows where grows it not? If vain our toil, And fled from monarchs, ST JOHN! dwells with thee. Pope's future labours were chiefly confined to satire. In 1727 he published, in conjunction with his friend Swift, three volumes of Miscellanies, in prose and verse, which drew down upon the authors a torrent of invective, lampoons, and libels, and ultimately led to the Dunciad, by Pope. This elaborate and splendid satire displays the fertile invention of the poet, the variety of his illustration, and the unrivalled force and facility of his diction; but it is now read with a feeling more allied to pity than admiration-pity that one so highly gifted should have allowed himself to descend to things so mean, and devote the end of a great literary life to the infliction of retributary pain on every humble aspirant in the world of letters. 'I have often wondered,' says Cowper, that the same poet who wrote the "Dunciad" should have written these lines That mercy I to others show, Alas for Pope, if the mercy he showed to others was the measure of the mercy he received.' Sir Walter Scott has justly remarked, that Pope must have suffered the most from these wretched contentions. It is known that his temper was ultimately much | changed for the worse. Misfortunes were also now gathering round him. Swift was fast verging on insanity, and was lost to the world; Atterbury and Gay died in 1732; and next year his venerable mother, whose declining years he had watched with affectionate solicitude, also expired. Between the years 1733 and 1740, Pope published his inimitable Epistles, Satires, and Moral Essays, addressed to his friends Bolingbroke, Bathurst, Arbuthnot, &c., and containing the most noble and generous sentiments, mixed up with withering invective and the fiercest denunciations. In 1742 he added a fourth book to the 'Dunciad,' displaying the final advent of the goddess to destroy order and science, and to substitute the kingdom of the dull upon earth. The point of his individual satire, and the richness and boldness of his general design, attest the undiminished powers and intense feeling of the poet. Next year Pope prepared a new edition of the four books of the Dunciad,' and elevated Colley Cibber to the situation of hero of the poem. This unenviable honour had previously been enjoyed by Theobald, a tasteless critic and commentator on Shakspeare; but in thus yielding to his personal dislike of Cibber, Pope injured the force of his satire. The laureate, as Warton justly remarks, with a great stock of levity, vanity, and affectation, had sense, and wit, and humour; and the author of the "Careless Husband" was by no means a proper king of the dunces.' Cibber was all vivacity and conceit-the very reverse of personified dulness, Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound. Political events came in the rear of this accumulated and vehement satire to agitate the last days of Pope. The anticipated approach of the Pretender led the government to issue a proclamation prohibiting every Roman Catholic from appearing within ten miles of London. The poet complied with the proclamation; and he was soon afterwards too ill to be in town. This additional proclamation from the Highest of all Powers,' as he terms his sickness, he submitted to without murmuring. A constant state of excitement, added to a life of ceaseless study and contemplation, operating on a frame naturally delicate and deformed from birth, had completely exhausted the powers of Pope. 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 seem to feel it within 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.' He died at Twickenham on the 30th of May, 1744. The character and genius of Pope have given rise to abundance of comment and speculation. The occasional fierceness and petulance of his satire cannot be justified, even by the coarse attacks of his opponents, and must be ascribed to his extreme sensibility, to over-indulged vanity, and to a hasty and irritable temper. His sickly constitution debarring him from active pursuits, he placed too high a value on mere literary fame, and was deficient in the manly virtues of sincerity and candour. At the same time he was a public benefactor, by stigmatising the vices of the great, and lashing the absurd pretenders to taste and literature. He was a fond and steady friend; and in all our literary biography, there is nothing finer than his constant undeviating affection and reverence for his venerable parents. Me let the tender office long engage, To rock the cradle of reposing age; With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death; Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, And keep at least one parent from the sky. Prologue to the Satires. As a poet, it would be absurd to rank Pope with the greatest masters of the lyre; with the universality of Shakspeare, or the sublimity of Milton. He was undoubtedly more the poet of artificial life and manners than the poet of nature. He was a nice observer and an accurate describer of the phenomena of the mind, and of the varying shades and gradations of vice and virtue, wisdom and folly. He was too fond of point and antithesis, but the polish of the weapon was equalled by its keenness. Let us look,' says Campbell, to the spirit that points his antithesis, and to the rapid precision of his thoughts, and we shall forgive him for being too antithetic and sententious.' His wit, fancy, and good sense, are as remarkable as his satire. His elegance has never been surpassed, or perhaps equalled: it is a combination of intellect, imagination, and taste, under the direction of an independent spirit and refined moral feeling. If he had studied more in the school of nature and of Shakspeare, and less in the school of Horace and Boileau; if he had cherished the frame and spirit in which he composed the Elegy' and the Eloisa,' and forgot his too exclusive devotion to that which inspired the Dunciad,' the world would have hallowed his memory with a still more affectionate and permanent interest than even that which waits on him as one of our most brilliant and accomplished English poets. Mr Campbell in his 'Specimens' has given an eloquent estimate of the general powers of Pope, with reference to his position as a poet:-That Pope was neither so insensible to the beauties of nature, nor so indistinct in describing them, as to forget the tion, nature includes artificial forms and manners. Rapt into future times, the bard begun : A Virgin shall conceive, a Virgin bear a Son! From Jesse's root behold a branch arise, Whose sacred flower with fragrance fills the skies: The ethereal spirit o'er its leaves shall move, And on its top descends the mystic Dove. Ye heavens! from high the dewy nectar pour, And in soft silence shed the kindly shower. The sick and weak the healing plant shall aid, From storms a shelter, and from heat a shade. All crimes shall cease, and ancient frauds snall fail; Returning Justice lift aloft her scale; Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend, And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend. Swift fly the years, and rise the expected morn! Oh, spring to light, auspicious Babe, be born! See, nature hastes her earliest wreaths to bring, With all the incense of the breathing spring! See lofty Lebanon his head advance! See nodding forests on the mountains dance! See spicy clouds from lowly Sharon rise, And Carmel's flowery top perfume the skies! Hark! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers; Prepare the way! a God, a God appears! A God, a God! the vocal hills reply; The rocks proclaim the approaching Deity. Lo! earth receives him from the bending skies; Sink down, ye mountains; and ye valleys rise; With heads declined, ye cedars homage pay; Be smooth, ye rocks: ye rapid floods, give way! The Saviour comes! by ancient bards foretold: He from thick films shall purge the visual ray, Richardson is no less a painter of nature than Homer. Tis he the obstructed paths of sound shall clear, And on the sightless eyeball pour the day: Homer himself is a minute describer of works of And bid new music charm the unfolding ear: art; and Milton is full of imagery derived from it. The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego, Satan's spear is compared to the pine, that makes And leap exulting like the bounding roe. "the mast of some great ammiral;" and his shield is No sigh, no murmur, the wide world shall hear ; like the moon, but like the moon artificially seen through the glass of the Tuscan artist. The "spirit-In adamantine chains shall death be bound, From every face he wipes off every tear. stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, the royal banner, and all the quality, pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war," are all artificial images. When Shakspeare groups into one view the most sublime objects of the universe, he fixes on “the cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples." Those who have ever witnessed the spectacle of the launching of a ship of the line, will perhaps forgive me for adding this to the examples of the sublime objects of artificial life. Of that spectacle I can never forget the impression, and of having witnessed it reflected from the faces of ten thousand spectators. They seem yet before me. I sympathise with their deep and silent expectation, and with their final burst of enthusiasm. It was not a vulgar joy, but an affecting national solemnity. When the vast bulwark sprang from her cradle, the calm water on which she swung majestically round, gave the imagination a contrast of the stormy element in which she was soon to ride. All the days of battle and nights of danger which she had to encounter, all the ends of the earth which she had to visit, and all that she had to do and to suffer for her country, rose in awful presentiment before the mind; and when the heart gave her a benediction, it was like one pronounced on a living being.' The Messiah. Ye nymphs of Solyma! begin the song: And hell's grim tyrant feel the eternal wound. To leafless shrubs the flowery palms succeed, |