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artifice, which form the greatest stains on his character. A sound mind in a sound body, united to far inferior mental powers, could never have stooped to such petty arts and manœuvres as those which characterised this eminent poet, He condescended, as Lady Bolingbroke, in a French phrase, remarked, "to play the politician about cabbages and turnips." He could not drink tea without a stratagem, was the observation of another lady; and the same defect in his daily life marked his conduct in literature. It is seen in the circumstances attending the publication of the Dunciad and the Correspondence, and in many of his satirical portraits. "Mr. Pope always told me," said Warburton, "that when he had anything better than ordinary to say, and yet too bold, he reserved it for a second or third edition, and then nobody took any notice of it." Thus the sarcastic lines on Queen Caroline's death, a couplet fixing the character of Bufo on Lord Halifax, and the characters of Chloe, Philomedé, and Atossa were after-additions to the poems in which they appear; and numerous examples of the same artifice appear in the notes. In the cases of Aaron Hill and the Duchess of Marlborough, defence is impossible.

The excessive severity of the poet's satire can as little be justified on public or moral grounds. In attacking the Court and ridiculing the follies of the great, he probably conceived that he was discharging a duty to society, and fulfilling Arbuthnot's injunction to chastise that he might reform. Such dignified reproof, however, fills but few of his pages. He inveighed against corruption, but left the great corrupter, Walpole, untouched. Wounded vanity and personal resentment dictated the greater portion of his withering invectives and ridicule; and he must have smiled himself if asked what chance he had of reforming Theobald, the harmless plodding commentator, of transforming Cibber into a grave and decorous citizen, or making Lady Mary and Lord Hervey repent and be silent. He wrote, like the youthful Byron, to show his wit and wrath, and he certainly made his enemies tremble.

The poet's conquest truth and time proclaim,

But yet the battle hurt his peace and fame.-Crabbe.

There was a purer atmosphere above all this murky strife which Pope longed for, and flattered himself that he had attained. He claimed to be more moral in his life and conduct than most of the wits of his day-to be indifferent to fame or riches-and to regard poetry as secondary only to Christian and moral duty. There was no virtue which he did not desire his friends to believe that he possessed; but in truth this self-portraiture was a mere mirage or delusion, continued from habit. His morality was not above that of the men of the world of his age. His model of female excellence was Mrs. Howard, the king's mistress, and Bolingbroke he esteemed as the most transcendent of mortals. The boasted philosophic indifference of the poet had never any real existence. Vanity and imagination supplied all the colours and combinations of the fascinating picture. Yet the severest censor must admit that when no personal jealousy or rivalry was interposed, Pope was a kind and beneficent man-zealous in the service of his friends, an affectionate relation, and good citizen. There were also a moral elevation of thought and steadiness of purpose in his resolution to trust to literature, and preserve himself independent of party. There appear to have been no deep convictions that would have prevented him from embracing Protestantism, and accepting an office from Lord Oxford; "but I could not," he said, "make myself capable of it without giving a great deal of pain to my parents, such pain, indeed, as I would not have given to either of them, for all the places he could have bestowed on me." He remained faithful to his old creed, without bigotry, and his mother's blessing was never mixed with regret.

In the controversy which, about thirty years since, was waged with characteristic bitterness concerning the principles of poetry and the position of Pope, Mr. Bowles clearly and accurately defined the poet's literary character. "I sought not," he said, “to depreciate but to discriminate,

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and assign to him his proper rank and station in his art among English poets-below Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton in the highest order of imagination or impassioned poetry; but above Dryden, Lucretius, and Horace in moral and satirical. Inferior to Dryden in lyric sublimity; equal to him in painting characters from real life, such as are so powerfully delineated in Absolom and Achitophel, but superior to him in passion; for whatever equalled, or ever will approach, in its kind, the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard? In consequence of the exquisite pathos of this epistle I have assigned Pope a poetical rank far above Ovid. I have placed him above Horace in consequence of the perfect finish of his satires and moral poems; but in descriptive poetry, such as Windsor Forest, beneath Cowper or Thomson." In originality, it may be added, Pope was inferior to Dryden; but had Mr. Bowles always expressed himself as clearly and justly regarding Pope as in the above estimate, he would have saved himself a good deal of sharp controversy and personal odium. In the war that ensued, though he had Byron as an opponent, we think he was decidedly the victor. His "invariable principles" were the true principles. It would now be readily granted to him that the passions of the human heart which belong to nature in general are more adapted to the higher species of poetry than those which are derived from incidental and transient manners. Such a position cannot be disputed by any one who prefers Shakspeare to Pope; but Mr. Bowles had so many subtle distinctions and reservations, and was so tremblingly sensitive and afraid of making any concession in favour of Pope, that he marred his own argument, and laid himself open to misconstruction and ridicule. His pamphlets, however, deserve to be reprinted, at least in part, as they form a repertory of fine thoughts and valuable critical observations, illustrated by appropriate examples, which no poetical student can read without benefit and delight. Campbell, in attacking some of Bowles's extreme positions, took the general ground of praise (which in reality was not denied by Bowles, nor excluded from his definition),

that "Pope's discrimination lay in the lights and shades of human manners, which are at least as interesting as those of rocks and leaves. In moral eloquence he is for ever densus et instans sibi. The mind of a poet employed in concentrating such lines as these, descriptive of creative power, which

Builds life on death, on change duration founds,
And bids th' eternal wheels to know their rounds,

might well be excused for not descending to the minutely picturesque. The vindictive personality of his satire is a fault of the man, and not of the poet. But his wit is not all his charm. He glows with passion in the Epistle of Eloisa, and displays a lofty feeling much above that of the satirist and the man of the world in his Prologue to Cato and his Epistle to Lord Oxford. I know not how to designate the possessor of such gifts but by the name of a genuine poet." To all who would dispute Pope's title to the name of a poet, the most compendious answer would be to read aloud the prologue and epistle cited by Campbell in his eloquent criticism, or that eagle flight of Pope's genius, the conclusion to the Dunciad. But even the most prosaic of his epistles, where in general he keeps to the level of conversation in refined and intellectual society, are irradiated with lines and images which place them in the rank of poetry. It may be difficult to grasp or define the ethereal element, but its presence is always felt. The equanimity of spirit which Pope aspired to possess was perhaps injurious to him as a poet. He seemed afraid to launch into any bold imaginative conception, and ashamed to own a generous enthusiasm or admiration. The nil admirari of Horace, strained beyond its just meaning and application, he adopted as his guide in literature as in life; and it is fatal both to heroic virtues and to heroic verse. To attain to finished excellence in composition rather than originality of invention and design, was the object of his incessant care. Every page he read, and every thought he

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entertained or heard expressed, that could germinate into poetry, was noted down for future use; and never before was so much genuine poetry eliminated by such a process of gradual accumulation and repeated touches. Cowper has said,

There is a pleasure in poetic pains.
Which only poets know.

And Pope has described the pursuit of a poetical image: "We grasp," he says, some more beautiful idea in our own brain than our endeavours to express it can set to the view of others, and still do but labour to fall short of our first imagination. The gay colouring which fancy gave at the first transient glance we had of it, goes off in the execution, like those various figures in the gilded clouds, which while we gaze long upon to separate the parts of each imaginary image, the whole faints before the eye, and decays in confusion." But with him no particle was lost. The fragments were recompounded and set anew, in different forms; a touch, a word, imparted grace or strength; and the Promethean fire of the poet, though long withheld, breathed life and animation over all.

No poet ever enjoyed greater popularity, or had more influence on the taste of his age. In versification this was immediate and direct. His style was copied by innumerable imitators, until the public ear was cloyed with the everlasting echo of the heroic couplet. In his own didactic poems Pope was too uniform in his pauses and construction. The reader is apt to be fatigued with the regular recurrence of terse and pointed lines, the balanced verse and striking antithesis, unless attention be closely fixed on the weighty truths, the admirable sentiments, and marvellous felicity of diction which are compressed within these brilliant couplets. But besides harmonious versification Pope taught correctness and precision of thought, and brought slovenly execution into irredeemable disgrace. Thomson would not have thrice corrected, and almost re-written his Seasons,