6

other, as Thackeray says, 'a little round sleek Abbé of a man, soft-handed and soft-hearted,' who lived contentedly under patronage and had no taste for conflicts and ambitions. Prior's lyrics are like jewel-work-dainty, scintillating, full of brightness and colour; Gay has far less art, but touches us by a gentle appealing sincerity like that of a child. That odd, pretty sort of a thing' the Beggars' Opera, written as a burlesque at Swift's suggestion, gave him a vogue which he neither expected nor desired; he was far more at home writing fables at the fire-side or tuning his spinet for a pathetic ballad. But the Beggars' Opera, which fired the town and drove Handel to bankruptcy, is too important an event to be set aside, and it is therefore by a song from this that he is here represented.

ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744) was sickly and deformed from childhood, and was further cut off from other boys by the fact that he was a papist, and could therefore go neither to a public school nor to the university. He was an extraordinarily precocious child, and was early encouraged by his father to write verses. His Pastorals were written before he was eighteen, and they at once brought him into notice. The Essay on Criticism appeared in 1711. He became a member of Addison's circle, and his Messiah was published in the Spectator (1712). In the same year appeared The Rape of the Lock, and in 1713 came Windsor Forest. He helped Swift, Gay, Parnell, Arbuthnot, Congreve, and others, to found the 'Scriblerus Club', at which met a large number of the bestknown men of letters of the day. In 1715 the first numbers of his famous translation of the Iliad were published, and a dispute concerning this brought to a head the quarrel between him and Addison, which had long been imminent. He produced a large number of short poems and essays, and in 1725 edited the works of Shakespeare. The Dunciad appeared in 1728, and was enlarged in 1729. In this edition the hero was Theobald, who had offended Pope by criticizing his edition of Shakespeare. The fourth book was added in 1742, when

Theobald was replaced by Cibber. The Moral Essays were begun in 1731. Pope was a warm admirer of Bolingbroke, and in 1733 he produced the Essay on Man, which is largely an attempt to express in poetic form Bolingbroke's conception of the universe. The Universal Prayer appeared in 1738. In 1737 he began a new series of satires with the Epistle to Augustus. In addition to these he wrote a number of miscellaneous works, including a modernized version of Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale, the epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, an Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, a translation of the Odyssey, and many letters.

ESSAY ON CRITICISM

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 Parnassus1 but to please their ear,
Not mend their minds; as some to Church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.

These equal syllables alone require,

340

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;

6

Where'er
you find the cooling western breeze',
In the next line, it' 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

350

That, like a wounded snake, draws its slow length along.

The mountain sacred to the Muses.

Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
What's roundly smooth or languishingly slow;
And praise the easy vigour of a line,

360

Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join.1
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,

As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:

Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,

2

The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar: When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, 370 The line too labours, and the words move slow

3

Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,

;

Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main. Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,

And bid alternate passions fall and rise!

While, at each change, the son 5 of Libyan Jove
Now burns with glory, and then melts with love,
Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow,
Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow:
Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,
And the world's victor stood subdued by sound!
The power of music all our hearts allow,
And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.

380

1 'The excellency and dignity of it (i. e. rhyme) were never fully known till Mr. Waller (1606-87) taught it; he first made writing easily an art. . This sweetness of Mr. Waller's lyric poesy was afterwards followed in the epic by Sir John Denham (1615-69) in his Cooper's Hill, a poem which your Lordship knows, for the majesty of the style is, and ever will be, the exact standard of good writing.'-Dryden, Epistle Dedicatory of the Rival Ladies. 2 A Greek hero at Troy renowned for bodily strength.

3 The swift-footed queen of the Volscians. Virg. Aen. vii. 883.

4 Chief musician at the court of Alexander the Great.

5 Alexander. See Dryden's poem Alexander's Feast.

Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,
Who still are pleased too little or too much.
At every trifle scorn to take offence,

That always shows great pride, or little sense;

Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best,
Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest.
Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move;

For fools admire, but men of sense approve:

390

As things seem large which we through mists descry,
Dullness is ever apt to magnify.

Some foreign writers, some our own despise;

The ancients only, or the moderns prize.
Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied
To one small sect, and all are damned beside.
Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,
And force that sun but on a part to shine,
Which not alone the southern wit sublimes,
But ripens spirits in cold northern climes;
Which from the first has shone on ages past,
Enlights the present, and shall warm the last;
Though each may feel increases and decays,
And see now clearer and now darker days.
Regard not, then, if wit be old or new,
But blame the false, and value still the true.
Some ne'er advance a judgement of their own,
But catch the spreading notion of the town;
They reason and conclude by precedent,

And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent.
Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then
Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.
Of all this servile herd the worst is he
That in proud dullness joins with quality.
A constant critic at the great man's board,
To fetch and carry nonsense for my lord.

400

110

What woful stuff this madrigal would be,
In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me;
But let a lord once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens! how the style refines !
Before his sacred name flies every fault,
And each exalted stanza teems with thought!

PEACE to all such! but were there One whose fires
True Genius kindles, and fair Fame inspires;
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease:
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne;
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,
A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend;
Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging, that he ne'er obliged;
Like Cato1, give his little senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause ;
While wits and templars every sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise :-
Who but must laugh if such a man there be?
Who would not weep if Atticus 2 were he?

420

200

210

1 A reference to Addison's tragedy, Cato, which was produced in

1713.

2 Addison.