to them, are delightful reading. One fault only jars upon the sensibilities of modern readers. It is the exclusiveness of these great men. They were all the world to each other; out of the sacred and too circumscribed pale virtue and worth are not readily recognised by them, and what their affection gains in intensity is purchased by illiberal narrow

ness.

In 1721 Pope engaged to edit Shakspeare, a task for which he was unfit, from his want of the requisite knowledge of the literature of the Elizabethan era. It was published in 1725, with a preface by Pope of much value, which attracted attention to the works of the great dramatist, then less studied than they have been ever since. His deficiencies as an editor were exposed by Theobald, on whom Pope took ample vengeance in the Dunciad. But he gained little fame by his editorial work, and, considering the labour of collation and of composing the admirable preface, not much of fortune, as his remuneration, according to tradition, was only £217.

In 1723 Bishop Atterbury was tried for high treason, and banished. This was a heavy blow to Pope, who was examined upon his trial; and though he had merely to answer a few questions as to the course of life and conversation at Bromley, notwithstanding his desire to give such evidence as should benefit his friend, he said little, and blundered in the few words he uttered. In 1727, in conjunction with Swift, he published the Miscellanies, among them the famous "Art of Sinking in Poetry," which drew forth numberless libels and lampoons, aimed exclusively at Pope, and gave rise to those quarrels which occasioned the "Dunciad," the greatest of all his works, and the noblest monument of satiric power that genius has ever reared. Atterbury died in 1732, Gay in the same year, and the next year the mother whom he loved so well. He never completely recovered his cheerfulness. Swift now was as good as dead to him. His anticipations of insanity were too soon realised, and he with

drew from London, and from the society of his literary and political friends, to die like a poisoned rat in a hole. A piratical edition of Pope's letters, by Curll, caused him much uneasiness, and he requested his friends to return his correspondence with them. All complied save Swift, who seems to have been in the hands of those who were willing to avail themselves of his miseries to become the sharers of his literary confidences. In 1733 the "Essay on Man" was published, and the serious business of his life was now the further extension of that poem into a course of ethical philosophy. As a system of philosophy, however, it is defective, exhibiting, in different places, contradictory and opposite theories, and throughout a shallow eclecticism, with no determining principle, towards which all the reasoning and illustrations should gravitate. It contains, however, noble passages of incident and sentiment, harmoniously blended. His moral writings are read now only for their splendid imagery and illustrations, their terse and nervous diction, and their brilliant versification. The "Dunciad," in three books, with Theobald for its hero, had been published in 1728, but in 1742 he published a fourth book, and the year following a new edition of the whole work, in which Colley Cibber was raised to that painful eminence. This was a blunder, as Cibber was a man of lively parts, and possessed sense, wit, and humour, by no means the qualifications that would recommend him to the Goddess of Dulness. It requires considerable acquaintance with the private history and literary gossip of the period for a modern reader fully to understand and appreciate the "Dunciad ;" and one is apt to wonder at the lavish expenditure of wrath and poetic power on objects so insignificant. They would have descended quietly into obli vion had they not been preserved in the amber of Pope's immortal verse. He hunts down vermin with ruthless vigour, and, amid unrivalled power and felicity of execution, he leaves on the mind of the reader an impression of implac able malignity altogether foreign to his character. He

merely desired to do thoroughly whatever he engaged in. Though he flogged Dennis with what seems terrible severity, he did the old man many kindnesses. And dreadful as were the wounds he gave, he suffered more than his victims. So susceptible was he, that the dullest dunce in Grub Street could cut him to the quick. This weakness he tried to conceal; but those who saw his countenance after reading some stupid slander have described it as expressing exquisite torture.

Some of these slanders were silly enough. For example, Dennis says:- "Mr Pope is an open and mortal enemy to his country and the commonwealth of learning. Some call him a Popish Whig, which is directly inconsistent. Pope, as a Papist, must be a Tory and Highflyer. He is a Popish writer bred up with a contempt of the sacred writings. His celigion allows him to destroy heretics, not only with his pen but with fire and sword; and such were all those unhappy wits whom he sacrificed to his accursed Popish principles. It deserved vengeance to suggest that Mr Pope had less infallibility than his namesake at Rome." Such were the amenities of literature in the early part of the eighteenth century, such the compliments that passed between authors who had lived and flourished in the days of Anne, the Augustan era of English letters! No writer would now pollute his pen with them, no publisher would now give them to the world. But there was a lower deep still. Pope was nicknamed an ape, an ass, a frog, a coward, a knave, a fool, a thing. "Let us take the initial letter of his Christian name and the initial and final letter of his surname-viz., A. P. E, and they give you the same idea of an ape as his face. It is my duty to pull off the lion's skin from this little ass. A squab, short gentleman-a little creature that, like the frog in the fable, swells, and is angry that it is not allowed to be as big as an ox-a lurking, waylaying coward-one whom God and nature have marked for want of common honesty a little abject thing." All this is so undignified,

so childish, so dunce-like, that Pope might very well have forborne to notice it. But he was eminently sensitive; he had been so made of and coddled at home, and wherever he went, by one and all, that the slightest failure in respect, not to speak of such wholesale defamation, roused all his ire.

The loss in rapid succession of his nearest and dearest friends, with the superadded annoyance of the stings of those hornets which the satire of the "Dunciad" brought upon him in swarms, fretted him excessively, and he was conscious that he was rapidly breaking up. He set about giving the last finish to his works, in which he was assisted by Warburton. His remaining friends gathered round him, and it is pleasant to know that his last days were spent in calmness and composure. His disease was dropsy of the chest. He dined in company two days before he died; and the day preceding his death, he took an airing on Blackheath. His mental powers were sometimes obscured by delirium, but his humanity and goodness suffered not even the most momentary eclipse. Bolingbroke was so affected that he broke down in speaking of his kindness and warmth of heart. On the 30th of May 1744, at the age of fifty-six, he breathed his last, and so quietly that the moment of his decease could not be distinguished.

His personal character was either over or under rated during his lifetime. He was naturally one-sided, and his friendships and dislikes were intense. But he was generous, affectionate, and grateful. He delighted in refined society, especially in that of accomplished females, and his manners were singularly elegant. He was accused of parsimony, but his expenditure had been limited to preserve his independence. He was no great man's parasite, but "pleased by manly ways." His greatest fault was his vanity. He was extremely self-conscious. He was afraid that his letters would be opened at the post-office, where it is likely his handwriting was unknown. He was afraid to inscribe, "O Rare Bounce!" on the tombstone of a favourite dog, lest the

world should cry out that the famous Mr Pope was having a fling at Ben Jonson. He may have been chargeable sometimes with duplicity and petty manoeuvring, but on the whole he was a brave and kindly man.

A good deal has been written about his versification. He was the perfecter of the heroic couplet-the favourite measure of the period, and exquisitely adapted to didactic and satirical compositions, in which precisely lay his strength. In the exquisite finish of his verse alone does he excel his master Dryden. This has been called a merely mechanical excellence; and to some extent it is. But though the trick was soon learned, it required genius to invent and perfect it. The greatest defect to modern ears in Pope's verse is the monotony of the pauses and the too frequent finishing of the sense at the close of every second line. His rhymes are often incorrect. For this and for his lavish use of triplets he was censured by Swift. Open his works at a venture, and we find fault rhyming always as if it sounded faut, obliged sounds obleeged, which may have been the pronunciation of the period, sphere rhymes to there, stay to sea, which is surely an Hibernicism; scene to men, revere to star, and

so on.

What place does Pope occupy as a poet? He is not to be classed with Shakspeare and Milton. He wants the universality of the one and the sublimity of the other. He does not look out on man and nature with the calm and loving and all-embracing sympathy of Shakspeare, nor, like Milton, can he sweep with supreme dominion the realms of light and darkness and chaos. The invisible world reveals to him but sylphs and gnomes, who agitate themselves about the tresses of a lady. A Hamlet, an Othello, a Portia, a Desdemona, he never could have evoked from the depths of his consciousness. A Satan was above and beyond his range. Had he represented Eden, it would have been clipped and trimmed like his grounds at Twickenham. But no poet of any age or clime is his equal as an observer and critic of