triumphs of the British army abroad-translations from the Roman poets-and devotional pieces. His correct, pious, and generally amiable character, are conspicuous in his metrical compositions; but they do not, in any great degree, display the higher qualities of poetry, and are now not much regarded. SAMUEL GARTH, born of a good family in Yorkshire, and who became a favourite physician among the Whigs during the reign of William, published in 1697 a mock-heroic composition, entitled the Dispensary, referring to a dispute in the College of Physicians, respecting the commencement of a charitable institution, in which the poet strongly advocated the cause of benevolence. This work long held its place in our popular literature, on account of its wit and neatness of expression. Garth wrote a few other poems, chiefly upon occasional subjects. SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE, another popular Whig physician of this era, published, in 1695, the heroic poem of Prince Arthur, in ten books,-in 1697, another heroic poem entitled King Arthur, in twelve books, and in 1713, a philosophical poem called Creation, in seven books; works which enjoyed great reputation in their own day, but have long been condemned as flat, inelegant, and wearisome. The admiration which they once enjoyed, is not wholly to be attributed to the low state of public taste, but in a great measure to the spirit of party. Blackmore being a zealous Whig, and a friend of the King, who knighted him, it became a kind of political duty with one set of people to read and praise his works, while another heartily despised them. At length his dulness tired even his friends. His Eliza, a heroic poem in ten books, which appeared in 1705,-his Nature of Man, a philosophical poem in three books, published in 1711,his King Alfred, a fourth heroic poem, in twelve books, published in 1723,—and a great variety of minor pieces, both in prose and poetry, fell still-born from the press. He died at an advanced age in 1729.

When ALEXANDER POPE, about the year 1709, first appeared conspicuously before the literary world, poetry had sunk into a comparatively languid condition. This celebrated man, the son of a linen-draper in London, of the Catholic persuasion, was born in 1688. He

was reared at a sequestered villa in Windsor Forest, to which his father had retired with a competence; and at twelve years of age, he composed some verses of considerable merit. The extreme weakness and deformity of his person inclined him to a studious life; and as he did not require to apply to any profession for his support, he was encouraged by his father to become a poet. His principal efforts in boyhood were translations from the Roman poets; a kind of literary labour which was never more extensively cultivated than during this period. At sixteen he wrote some Pastorals, and the beginning of a poem entitled Windsor Forest, which, when published a few years afterwards, obtained high praise for melody of versification. In his early years, he had much intercourse with a Mr. Cromwell, who is described as having been a mixture of the pedant and beau; and from this individual he acquired many habits of thinking and expression, by no means amiable,—in particular, a sarcastic way of treating the female sex. At twenty-one, he wrote his Essay on Criticism, which excited universal admiration by the comprehensiveness of thought, the justness of the remarks, and the happiness of illustration, which were then attributed to it, though its merits in these respects have been held somewhat lower since. Of this poem it may be said that it at once describes, and is a very fair specimen of, what the wits of Queen Anne's reign were most captivated by an epigrammatic turn of thought, and a happy appropriateness of expression. The following is one of the most admired passages:

But most by numbers judge a poet's song;

And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong:
In the bright muse though thousand charms conspire,

Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire.

Who haunt Parnassus but to please the ear,

Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.

These equal syllables alone require,

Though oft the ear the open vowels tire;
While expletives their feeble aid do join,

And ten low words oft creep in one dull line:

While they ring round the same unvaried chimes
With sure returns of still expected rhymes;

Where'er you find

In the next line it

the cooling western breeze,'
whispers through the trees :'

If crystal streams with pleasing murmurs creep,'
The reader's threatened, not in vain, with 'sleep :'
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught

With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,

Which like a wounded snake drags its slow length along.

The dexterity with which the passages here marked in italics were made to exemplify the faults which they condemned, was greatly prized by the readers of those days; and it is allowed that these deformities were thenceforward banished from our literature. In 1711, when only twenty-three years of age, Pope wrote the two most beautiful of all his original poems-The Rape of the Lock, and the Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady. The former of these is a heroic-comical poem in five short cantos, written originally as a mere piece of pleasantry for the amusement of a private circle, and referring to no other incident than the cutting away of a lock of hair from the tresses of a young lady, by a gentleman who desired it as a keepsake. In its original form, the poem described this incident with comparative brevity and simplicity; but the poet afterwards introduced into it what was called machinery,-namely, a set of supernatural beings, who, like the heathen deities in the Iliad and Æneid, were employed in developing the plot and bringing it to a conclusion. The machinery adopted by Pope consisted of the sylphs and gnomes, good and evil genii, who were supposed by the Rosicrucian philosophers to direct the proceedings of human beings; and no kind of creatures could have been better adapted to enter into a story compounded, as this is, of airy fashionable frivolities. The lady whose loss gave rise to the poem, was Miss Arabella Fermor, whom Pope denominates Belinda; the lover was a Lord Petre; and the object of the poem was to suppress the quarrel which his lordship's felony had occasioned, not only between himself and his mistress, but between their respective families. The main incident is described as taking place at the tea-table.

THE SEVERING OF THE LOCK.

For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crown'd,
The berries crackle and the mill turns round,

POPE.

On shining altars of Japan they raise
The silver lamp; the fiery spirits blaze.
From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,
While China's earth receives the smoking tide.
At once they gratify their scent and taste,
And frequent cups prolong the rich repast.
Straight hover round the fair her airy band;
Some, as she sipped, the fuming liquor fann'd;
Some o'er her lap their careful plumes display'd,
Trembling and conscious of the rich brocade.
Coffee, which makes the politician wise,

And see through all things with his half-shut eyes,
Sent up new vapours to the baron's brain,
New stratagems the radiant Lock to gain.
Ah cease, rash youth! desist ere 'tis too late,
Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla's fate!
Chang'd to a bird, and sent to flit in air,
She dearly pays for Nisus' injur'd hair!

But when to mischief mortals bend their will,
How soon they find fit instruments of ill!
Just then Clarissa drew with tempting grace
A two-edg'd weapon from her shining case:
So ladies in romance assist their knight,
Present the spear and arm him for the fight.
He takes the gift with reverence, and extends
The little engine on his fingers'-ends;
This just behind Belinda's neck he spread,
As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her head.
Swift to the Lock a thousand sprites repair,
A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the hair,
And thrice they twitch'd the diamond in her ear;
Thrice she drew back, and thrice the foe drew near.
Just in that instant, anxious Ariel sought
The close recesses of the virgin's thought;
As on the nosegay in her breast reclin'd,
He watch'd th' ideas rising in her mind."
Sudden he view'd, in spite of all her art,
An earthly lover lurking at her heart.
Amaz'd, confus'd, he found his power expir'd,
Resign'd to fate, and with a sigh retir'd.

The peer now spreads the glittering forceps wide,
T'inclose the lock; now joins it, to divide,
Ev'n then, before the fatal engine clos'd,
A wretched sylph too fondly interpos'd;

Fate urg'd the shears, and cut the sylph in twain,
(But airy substance soon unites again;)
The meeting points the sacred hair dissever
From the fair head, for ever and for ever!

Then flash'd the living lightning from her eyes,
And screams of terror rend th' affrighted skies.
Not louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast,
When husbands, or when lap-dogs breathe their last;
Or when rich China vessels, fall'n from high,
In glittering dust and painted fragments lie.

111

The Rape of the Lock contains more fancy than any of the other poems of its author, though it is exerted only on ludicrous and artificial objects. His Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady, written at the same time, and his Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, composed a few years later, are the only poems of Pope which contain much passion or deep feeling. The heroine of the former, whose name has not been ascertained, is said to have destroyed herself in France, in consequence of her affections being blighted by the tyranny of an uncle; and the following are some of the more pathetic couplets in which her loss is deplored :

What can atone, oh ever-injur'd shade,

Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid?

No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear,
Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd, thy mournful bier:
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs compos'd.
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd,
By strangers honour'd and by strangers mourn'd!
What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of woe

To midnight dances and the public show?
What though no weeping loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polish'd marble emulate thy face?
What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor hallow'd dirge be mutter'd o'er thy tomb ?
Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be dress'd,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground now sacred by thy relics made.

So, peaceful rests, without a stone, a name,
What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame.
A heap of dust alone remains of thee;

'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!

When Pope, in 1713, had reached the age of twenty-five, he found his reputation as a poet completely established. Being anxious to increase the small competence which he enjoyed through his father, he resolved to turn his fame to account by a translation of the Iliad, which he justly supposed would prove a profitable undertaking. The publication took place at intervals, but was completed in 1720, when the translator was only thirty-two. Pope's Iliad is not regarded as a faithful