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, 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 I 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. 6 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. 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 As a poet, it would be absurd to rank Pope with the mother, whose declining years he had watched with greatest masters of the lyre; with the universality of affectionate solicitude, also expired. Between the Shakspeare, or the sublimity of Milton. He was years 1733 and 1740, Pope published his inimitable undoubtedly more the poet of artificial life and manEpistles, Satires, and Moral Essays, addressed to his ners than the poet of nature. He was a nice observer friends Bolingbroke, Bathurst, Arbuthnot, &c., and and an accurate describer of the phenomena of the containing the most noble and generous sentiments, mind, and of the varying shades and gradations of mixed up with withering invective and the fiercest vice and virtue, wisdom and folly. He was too fond denunciations. In 1742 he added a fourth book to of point and antithesis, but the polish of the weapon the Dunciad,' displaying the final advent of the god-was equalled by its keenness. Let us look,' says dess 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. 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 tion, nature includes artificial forms and manners. Rapt into future times, the bard begun : so indistinct in describing them, as to forget the character of a genuine poet, is what I mean to urge, without exaggerating his picturesqueness. But before speaking of that quality in his writings, I would beg leave to observe, in the first place, that the faculty by which a poet luminously describes objects of art, is essentially the same faculty which enables him to be a faithful describer of simple nature; in the second place, that nature and art are to a greater degree | relative terms in poetical description than is generally recollected; and thirdly, that artificial objects and manners are of so much importance in fiction, as to make the exquisite description of them no less characteristic of genius than the description of simple physical appearances. The poet is "creation's heir." He deepens our social interest in existence. It is surely by the liveliness of the interest which he excites in existence, and not by the class of subjects which he chooses, that we most fairly appreciate the genius or the life of life which is in him. It is no irreverence to the external charms of nature to say, that they are not more important to a poet's study than the manners and affections of his species. Nature is the poet's goddess; but by nature, no one rightly understands her mere inanimate face, however charming it may be, or the simple landscapepainting of trees, clouds, precipices, and flowers. Why, then, try Pope, or any other poet, exclusively by his powers of describing inanimate phenomena? Nature, in the wide and proper sense of the word, means life in all its circumstances-nature, moral as well as external. As the subject of inspired fic-lear him, ye deaf: and all ye blind, behold! He from thick films shall purge the visual ray, And on the sightless eyeball pour the day: 'Tis he the obstructed paths of sound shall clear, The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego, And bid new music charm the unfolding ear: And leap exulting like the bounding roe. No sigh, no murmur, the wide world shall hear ; In adamantine chains shall death be bound, From every face he wipes off every tear. And hell's grim tyrant feel the eternal wound. As the good shepherd tends his fleecy care, Seeks freshest pasture, and the purest air; Explores the lost, the wandering sheep directs, By day o'ersees them, and by night protects; The tender lambs he raises in his arms, Feeds from his hand and in his bosom warms; Thus shall mankind his guardian care engage, The promised father of the future age. No more shall nation against nation rise, Nor ardent warriors meet with hateful eyes; Nor fields with gleaming steel be covered o'er, The brazen trumpets kindle rage no more: But useless lances into scythes shall bend, And the broad falchion in a ploughshare end. Then palaces shall rise; the joyful son Shall finish what his short-lived sire begun; Their vines a shadow to their race shall yield, And the same hand that sowed, shall reap the field. The swain in barren deserts with surprise Sees lilies spring, and sudden verdure rise; And starts, amidst the thirsty wilds to hear New falls of water murmuring in his ear. On rifted rocks, the dragon's late abodes, The green reed trembles, and the bulrush nods. Waste sandy valleys, once perplexed with thorn, The spiry fir and shapely box adorn : Richardson is no less a painter of nature than Homer. Homer himself is a minute describer of works of art; and Milton is full of imagery derived from it. Satan's spear is compared to the pine, that makes "the mast of some great ammiral;" and his shield is like the moon, but like the moon artificially seen through the glass of the Tuscan artist. The "spiritstirring 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: To leafless shrubs the flowery palms succeed, Pleased the green lustre of the scales survey, And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow. [The Toilet.] [From The Rape of the Lock."] And now, unveiled, the toilet stands displayed, And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes. [Description of Belinda and the Sylphs.] Not with more glories, in the ethereal plain, On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, This nymph, to the destruction of mankind, The advent'rous baron the bright locks admired; He saw, he wished, and to the prize aspired. Resolved to win, he meditates the way, By force to ravish, or by fraud betray; For when success a lover's toil attends, Few ask if fraud or force attained his ends. For this, ere Phoebus rose, he had implored Propitious heaven, and every power adored; But chiefly Love-to Love an altar built, Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves, And all the trophies of his former loves; With tender billet-doux he lights the pyre, And breathes three amorous sighs to raise the fire. Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize; The powers gave ear, and granted half his prayer, The rest the winds dispersed in empty air. But now secure the painted vessel glides, The sunbeams trembling on the floating tides: While melting music steals upon the sky, And softened sounds along the waters die; Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play, Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay. All but the Sylph, with careful thoughts opprest, The impending wo sat heavy on his breast. He summons straight his denizens of air; The lucid squadrons round the sails repair. Soft o'er the shrouds aërial whispers breathe, That seemed but zephyrs to the train beneath. Some to the sun their insect wings unfold, Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold; Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight, Their fluid bodies half dissolved in light, Loose to the wind their airy garments flew, Thin glittering textures of the filmy dew, Dipped in the richest tincture of the skies, Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes; While every beam new transient colours flings, Colours that change whene'er they wave their wings. Amid the circle on the gilded mast, Superior by the head was Ariel placed; His purple pinions opening to the sun, He raised his azure wand and thus begun : Ye sylphs and sylphids, to your chief give ear; Fays, fairies, genii, elves, and dæmons, hear! Ye know the spheres, and various tasks assigned By laws eternal to the aërial kind. Some in the fields of purest ether play, And bask and whiten in the blaze of day; Some guide the course of wandering orbs on high, Or roll the planets through the boundless sky; Some, less refined, beneath the moon's pale light Pursue the stars that shoot athwart the night, Or suck the mists in grosser air below, Or dip their pinions in the painted bow, Or brew fierce tempests on the wintry main, Or o'er the glebe distil the kindly rain. Others on earth o'er human race preside, Watch all their ways, and all their actions guide: Of these the chief the care of nations own, And guard with arms divine the British throne. Our humbler province is to tend the fair, This day, black omens threat the brightest fair But what, or where, the fates have wrapped in night. Or stain her honour, or her new brocade, Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade; Or lose her heart or necklace at a ball; . Shrines, where their vigils pale-eyed virgins keep! Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose, Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear! Led through a sad variety of wo: Now warm in love, now withering in my bloom, There stern religion quenched the unwilling flame, Or whether heaven has doomed that Shock must fall. There died the best of passions, love and fame. Haste, then, ye spirits! to your charge repair: The fluttering fan be Zephyretta's care; We trust the important charge, the petticoat: Whatever spirit, careless of his charge, He spoke; the spirits from the sails descend: [From the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard.] In these deep solitudes and awful cells, Dear, fatal name! rest ever unrevealed, Ye rugged rocks, which holy knees have worn! Yet write, oh write me all, that I may join Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief; In these lone walls (their day's eternal bound) Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene, What scenes appear where'er I turn my view? While prostrate here in humble grief I lie, Take back that grace, those sorrows, and those tears; Take back my fruitless penitence and prayers; Snatch me, just mounting, from the blest abode ; Assist the fiends, and tear me from my God! No, fly me, fly me! far as pole from pole; See in her cell sad Eloisa spread, Oh death, all-eloquent! you only prove Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady. What beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight shade, Why bade ye else, ye powers! her soul aspire From these perhaps (ere nature bade her die) But thou, false guardian of a charge too good, What can atone (O ever injured shade!) Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid? No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear Pleased thy pale ghost, or graced thy mournful bier: By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed, By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed, By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned, By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned! |