Perhaps I may allow, the dean Had too much satire in his vein, And seemed determined not to starve it, He neither knew you, nor your name: Which, if he liked, much good may't do him. I I hear they're of a different kind: A few in verse; but most in prose: her, As never favouring the Pretender: But not one sermon, you may swear.' I own myself no judge of those. Nor can I tell what critics thought 'em ; That kingdom he hath left his debtor; And, since you dread no further lashes, Methinks you may forgive his ashes.' The Grand Question Debated: Whether Hamilton's Bawn should be turned into a Barrack or a Malt-house. 1729.* Thus spoke to my lady the knight1 full of care: Thus ended the knight: thus began his meek wife; It must and shall be a barrack, my life. I'm grown a mere mopus; no company comes, Thus argued my lady, but argued in vain ; But Hannah, who listened to all that was past, And could not endure so vulgar a taste, As soon as her ladyship called to be drest, Cried, Madam, why, surely my master's possest. Sir Arthur the maltster! how fine it will sound! I'd rather the bawn were sunk under ground. But, madam, I guessed there would never come good, When I saw him so often with Darby and Wood.5 And now my dream's out; for I was a-dreamed That I saw a huge rat; O dear, how I screamed ! And after, methought, I had lost my new shoes; And Molly she said I should hear some ill news. * Swift spent almost a whole year (1728-9) at Gosford, in the north of Ireland, the seat of Sir Arthur Acheson, assisting Sir Arthur in his agricultural improvements, and lecturing, as usual, the lady of the manor upon the improvement of her health by walking, and her mind by reading. The circumstance of Sir Arthur letting a ruinous building called Hamilton's Bawn to the crown for a barrack, gave rise to one of the dean's most lively pieces of fugitive humour.-Scott's Life of Swift. A bawn is strictly a place near a house enclosed with mud or stone walls to keep the cattle. 1 Sir Arthur Acheson, an intimate friend of the poet. Sir Arthur was ancestor of the present Earl of Gosford. A large old house belonging to Sir Arthur, two miles from his residence. 3 A cant word in Ireland for a poor country clergyman. My lady's waiting-maid, 5 Two of Sir Arthur's managers. 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; To shorten my tale (for I hate a long story), The parsons for envy are ready to burst; Good morrow, good captain-I'll wait on you down-In mending your cassock, and smoothing your band; (For the dean was so shabby, and looked like a ninny farther-That the captain supposed he was curate to Jenny)." Whenever you see a cassock and gown, Go bring me my smock, and leave off your prate, O, la! the sweet gentleman, look in his face; A hundred to one but it covers a clown; 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. 2 Ovids, Plutarchs, Homers. 8 Nicknames for my lady. 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. 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) 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, unquestionPope now commenced his translation of the Iliad. ably the finest piece of argumentative and reasoning At first the gigantic task oppressed him with its poetry in the English language. The work is said difficulty, but he grew more familiar with Homer's to have been composed two years before publication, images and expressions, and in a short time was when Pope was only twenty-one. The ripeness of able to despatch fifty verses a-day. Great part of judgment which it displays is truly marvellous. the manuscript was written upon the backs and Addison commended the Essay' warmly in the covers of letters, evincing that it was not withSpectator, and it instantly rose into great popu-out reason he was called paper-sparing Pope. The larity. The style of Pope was now formed and com- poet obtained a clear sum of £5320, 4s. by this plete. His versification was that of his master, translation: his exclamationDryden, 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 And thanks to Homer, since I live and thrive, was, however, scarcely just, if we consider that this to the ancient Greek, and his departure from the nice discrimination of character and speech which prevails in Homer, are faults now universally admitted. Cowper (though he failed himself in Homer) justly remarks, that the Iliad and Odyssey in Pope's hands have no more the air of antiquity than if he had himself invented them.' The success of the Iliad led to the translation of the Odyssey; but Pope called in his friends Broome and Fenton as assistants. These two coadjutors translated twelve books, and the notes were compiled by Broome. Fenton received £300, and Broome £500, while Pope had £2885, 5s. The Homeric labours occupied a period of twelve years-from 1713 to 1725. The improvement of his pecuniary resources enabled the poet to remove from the shades of Windsor Forest to a rituation nearer the metropolis. He purchased a lease of a house and grounds at Twickenham, to which he removed with his father and mother, and where he continued to reside during the remainder of his life. This classic spot, which Pope delighted to improve, and where he was visited by ministers of state, wits, poets, and beauties, is now greatly defaced. Whilst on a visit to Oxford in 1716, Pope * Pope's house was not large, but sufficiently commodious for the wants of an English gentleman whose friends visited himself rather than his dwelling, and who were superior to the necessity of stately ceremonials. On one side it fronted to the road, which it closely adjoined; on the other, to a narrow 1.wn sloping to the Thames. A piece of pleasure-ground, including a garden, was cut off by the public road; an awkward and unpoetical arrangement, which the proprietor did his best to improve. After the poet's death, the villa was purchased by Sir William Stanhope, and subsequently by Lord Mendip, who carefully preserved everything connected with it; but, being in 1807 sold to the Baroness Ilowe, it was by that lady taken down, that a larger house might be built near its site. Now (1843), the place is the property of Young, Esq.; the second house has been enlarged into two, and further alterations are contemplated. The grounds have suffered a complete change since Pope's time, and a monument which he erected to his mother on a hillock at their further extremity has been removed. The only certain remnants of the poet's mansion are the vaults upon which it was built, three in number, the central one being connected with a tunnel, which, passing under the road, gives admission to the rear grounds, while the commenced, and probably finished, the most highly poetical and passionate of his works, the Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard. The delicacy of the poet in veiling over the circumstances of the story, and at the same time preserving the ardour of Eloisa's passion, the beauty of his imagery and descriptions, the exquisite melody of his versification, rising and falling like the tones of an Eolian harp, as he successively portrays the tumults of guilty love, the deepest penitence, and the highest devotional rapture, have never been surpassed. If less genial tastes and a love of satire withdrew Pope from those fountain-springs of the Muse, it was obviously from no want of power in the poet to display the richest hues of imagination, or the finest impulses of the human mind. The next literary undertaking of our author was an edition of Shakspeare, in which he attempted, with but indifferent success, to establish the text of the mighty poet, and explain his obscurities. In 1733, he published his Essay on Man, being part of a course of moral philosophy in verse which he projected. The Essay' is now read, not for its philosophy, but for its poetry. Its metaphysical distinctions are neglected for those splendid passages and striking incidents which irradiate the poem. In lines like the following, he speaks with a mingled sweetness and dignity superior to his great master Dryden : Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind Yet simple nature to his hope has given He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire; side ones are of the character of grottos, paved with square bricks, and stuck over with shells It is curious to find over the central stone of the entrance into the left of these grottos, a large ammonite, and over the other, the piece of hardened clay in which its cast was left. Pope must have regarded these merely as curiosities, or lusus naturæ, little dreaming of the wonderful tale of the early condition of our globe which they assist in telling. A short narrow piazza in front of the grottos is probably the evening colonnade' of the lines on the absence of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The taste with which Pope laid out his grounds at Twickenham (five acres in all), had a marked effect on English landscape gardening. The Prince of Wales took the design of his garden from the poet's; and Kent, the improver and embellisher of pleasure grounds, received his best lessons from Pope. He aided materially in banishing the stiff formal Dutch style. Where grows where grows it not? If vain our toil, The anticipated approach of the Pretender led the We ought to blame the culture, not the soil. Fixed to no spot is Happiness sincere ; 'Tis nowhere to be found, or everywhere; 'Tis never to be bought, but always free, 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. 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, o |