652 
sufficiently capable of eleganee, har! he not 
referred Pada i 
No one could compliment more delicately 
when he chose it, as noone was a better 
jndge of proprieties of behaviour, and the 
graces of the female character. ; 
«© From the preceding representation, you 
will conclude that I cannot set you to read 
Swift’s works straight forwards. In fact, 
your way through them must be picked very 
nicely, and a large portion of them must be 
teft unvisited. It should be observed, how- 
ever, todo him justice, that their impurities 
are not of the moral kind, bat are chiefly 
such as it is the scavenger’s office to re- 
move.” ¢ 
After recommending the perusal of 
Pope’s translations ot the Iliad and 
Odyssey, he thus procecds. 
«* Tf the task which I have enjoined you 
should prove tiresome before it is finished, 
ou may iterpose between the two trans- 
Eatns the perusal of the remaining original 
works of the same poet; such, I mean, as 
I can properly recommend to a Jady’s view. 
' « Whether the ‘ Epistle of Eloisa to 
Abelard’ be among this number, is a point 
which I feel a difficulty in determining; yet 
its celebrity will scarcely suffer it to be 
passed over in silence. They who are afraid 
of the inflammatory effect of high colouring 
applied to the tender passion, will object to 
a performance which, as the most exquisitely 
finished of all the author's productions, is, 
from its subject, rendered the more dan- 
gerous en that account. And true it is, 
that if the picture of violent desires, un- 
checked by virtue and wisdom, is to be re 
garded as too seductive, notwithstanding any 
annexed representation of the sufferings to 
which they give rise, not only this poem, 
but much of the real history of human life, 
should be concealed from the youthful sight. 
But surely such a distrust of good sense and 
‘principle is unworthy of an age which en- 
courages a liberal plan of mental cultivation. 
To be consistent it ought to bring back that 
state of ignorance, which was formerly reck- 
oned the best guard of innocence. The 
piece in question, it must be confessed, is 
faulty in giving too forcible an expression to 
sentiments inccnsistent with female purity ; 
but its leading purpose is to paint the strug- 
gles of one, who, after the indulgence of a 
guilty passion, flew to a penitential retreat 
without a due preparation for the change; 
ofa 
« —wretch belicv'd the gpouse of Godin vain, 
Confess’d within the slave of love and man.’ 
Such a condition is certainly no cbject of 
emulation ; and the poet has painted its mi- 
series with no less force than the inconside- 
rate raptures which led to it. The impres- 
sion supposed to be left by the story upon 
ging his vein for sarcastic wit. | 
PHILOLOGY AND CRITICISM. 
better regulated minds, is that which prompts © 
the prayer, ; 
«O may we never love as these havelov'd? + 
“The « Rape of the Lock,” styled by the. 
writer an herot-comical poem, though one of 
his early productions, stands the first among 
similar compositions in our language, per- 
haps in any other. Besides possessing the au- 
thor’s characteristic elegance and brilliancy 
of expression in a supreme degree, it exhibits 
a greater share of the inventive faculty than’ 
any other of his works. The humour of a 
piece of this kind consists in the mock dignity: - 
by which a trifling subject is elevated into 
importance, When such-a-design is exe- 
cuted with judgment, all the parts should 
correspond ; the moral, therefore, should be 
ironical, and the praise satirical. For attain- 
ing consistency in these points, the spirit of, 
the age and the character of the poct were 
well suited. ry 
««] must here let you into a secret, which, 
while it may justly excite your indignation, 
may presetve you from deception ‘That ex- 
travagant devotion to your sex which, per- 
haps, was a serious passion in the age of chi- 
valry, came in process of time, and espeeially 
as modified by the licentiousness and levity of, 
the French nation, to be a mere affair of com- 
pliment, The free admixture of women, 
which gave so much splendour and amenity 
to the French court, soon vitiated their man- 
ners ; and even while they enjoyed the great- 
est influence, they ceased to be respectable. 
Wholly occupied with the care of rendering 
themselves desirable to the men, they neg- 
lected the culture of their minds and the du- 
ties of their sex. They who pessessed beauty, 
relied upon that solely for their power of at-, 
traction; while those less favoured by nature 
sought a compensation in the graces. Al- 
though thus really dcbased, they did not exert 
a less absolute dominion over courtiers and 
men of pleasure as frivolous and vitiated as 
themselves; but in the mean time they lost 
the attachment of the sober and rational, and 
became objects of contempt to men of wit, 
In this state of things, the high-flown Jan- 
guage of adoration was intermixed with sly 
strokes of satire; and at length, so muchy 
irony was joined with the praise, that a wo~ 
man of sense would have regarded it as an 
insult. ; 
«© Pope had been educated in the French 
school of literature. His earliest ambition 
was to be reckoned a man of wit and gallans 
try in the madish sense ; and having natarall 
a cold and artificial. character, he was .we 
fitted to assume the part most conducive to 
the interests of his reputation. The personal 
disadyantages, too, under which he laboured, 
and which precluded his success as a real 
lover, accustomed him to fiction in his ad~ 
dresses to the sex, and probably infused a se~ ~ 
cret exasperation into his feelings when they 
were concerned, 
/ 
+ 
* 
t 
