Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew, I do not know how far Pope was indebted for the original idea, or the delightful execution of this poem, to the Lutrin of Boileau. The Rape of the Lock is a double-refined essence of wit and fancy, as the Essay on Criticism is of wit and sense. The quantity of thought and observation in this work, for so young a man as Pope was when he wrote it, is wonderful: unless we adopt the supposition, that most men of genius spend the rest of their lives in teaching others what they themselves have learned under twenty. The conciseness and felicity of the expression are equally remarkable. Thus in reasoning on the variety of men's opinion, he says "Tis with our judgments, as our watches; none Go just alike, yet each believes his own." Nothing can be more original and happy than the general remarks and illustrations in the Essay: the critical rules laid down are too much those of a school, and of a confined one. There is one L passage in the Essay on Criticism in which the author speaks with that eloquent enthusiasm of the fame of ancient writers, which those will always feel who have themselves any hope or chance of immortality. I have quoted the passage elsewhere, but I will repeat it here. "Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage, Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days, Whose honours with increase of ages grow, As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow." These lines come with double force and beauty on the reader, as they were dictated by the writer's despair of ever attaining that lasting glory which he celebrates with such disinterested enthusiasm in others, from the lateness of the age in which he lived, and from his writing in a tongue, not understood by other nations, and that grows obsolete and unintelligible to ourselves at the end of every second century. But he needed not have thus antedated his own poetical doom-the loss and entire oblivion of that which can never die. If he had known, he might have boasted that "his little bark" wafted down the stream of time, With theirs should sail, Pursue the triumph and partake the gale " if those who know how to set a due value on the blessing, were not the last to decide confidently. on their own pretensions to it. There is a cant in the present day about genius, as every thing in poetry: there was a cant in the time of Pope about sense, as performing all sorts of wonders. It was a kind of watchword, the shibboleth of a critical party of the day. As a proof of the exclusive attention which it occupied in their minds, it is remarkable that in the Essay on Criticism (not a very long poem) there are no less than half a score successive couplets rhyming to the word sense. This appears almost incredible without giving the instances, and no less so when they are given. "But of the two, less dangerous is the offence, To tire our patience than mislead our sense."—lines 3, 4. "In search of wit these lose their common sense, And then turn critics in their own defence."-l. 28, 29. "Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, And fills up all the mighty void of sense."-l. 209, 10. "Some by old words to fame have made pretence, Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense."—1.324, 5. ""Tis not enough no harshness gives offence; The sound must seem an echo to the sense."-l. 364, 5. "At every trifle scorn to take offence; That always shews great pride, or little sense."-1.386,7. "Be silent always, when you doubt your sense, And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence.”—l.366,7. "Be niggards of advice on no pretence, For the worst avarice is that of sense."-l. 578, 9. I have mentioned this the more for the sake of those critics who are bigotted idolisers of our author, chiefly on the score of his correctness. These persons seem to be of opinion that "there is but one perfect writer, even Pope." This is, however, a mistake: his excellence is by no means faultlessness. If he had no great faults, he is full of little errors. His grammatical construction is often lame and imperfect. In the Abelard and Eloise, he says—— "There died the best of passions, Love and Fame." This is not a legitimate ellipsis. ellipsis. Fame is not a passion, though love is: but his ear was evidently confused by the meeting of the sounds "love and fame," as if they of themselves immediately implied "love, and love of fame." Pope's rhymes are constantly defective, being rhymes to the eye instead of the ear; and this to a greater degree, not only than in later, but than in preceding writers. The praise of his versification must be confined to its uniform smoothness and harmony. In the translation of the Iliad, which has been considered as his masterpiece in style and execution, he continually changes the tenses in the same sentence for the purposes of the rhyme, which shews either a want of technical resources, or great inattention to punctilious exactness. But to have done with this. The epistle of Eloise to Abelard is the only exception I can think of, to the general spirit of the foregoing remarks; and I should be disingenuous not to acknowledge that it is an exception. The foundation is in the letters themselves of Abelard and Eloise, which are quite as impressive, but still in a different way. It is fine as a poem: it is finer as a piece of high-wrought eloquence. No woman could be supposed to write a better love-letter in verse. Besides the richness of the historical materials, the high gusto of the original sentiments which Pope had to work upon, there were perhaps circumstances in his own situation which made him enter into the subject with even more than a poet's feeling. The tears shed are |