S$8 POPE. 



present, and must compel its age to understand // ; the second 

 understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told. Let 

 us find strength and inspiration in the one, amusement and 

 instruction in the other, and be honestly thankful for both. 



The very earliest of Pope s productions give indications of 

 that sense and discretion, as well as wit, which afterwards so 

 eminently distinguished him. The facility of expression is re 

 markable, and we find also that perfect balance of metre, which 

 he afterwards carried so far as to be wearisome. His pastorals 

 were written in his sixteenth year, and their publication imme 

 diately brought him into notice. The following four verses from 

 his first pastoral are quite characteristic in their antithetic 

 balance : 



You that, too wise for pride, too good for power, 

 Enjoy the glory to be great no more, 

 And carrying with you all the world can boast, 

 To all the world illustriously are lost ! 



The sentiment is affected, and reminds one of that future period 

 of Pope s Correspondence with his. Friends, when Swift, his 

 heart corroding with disappointed ambition at Dublin, Boling- 

 broke raising delusive turnips at his farm, and Pope pretending 

 not to feel the lampoons which imbittered his life, played to 

 gether the solemn farce of affecting indifference to the world by 

 which it would have agonised them to be forgotten, and wrote 

 letters addressed to each other, but really intended for that 

 posterity whose opinion they assumed to despise. 



In these pastorals there is an entire want of nature. For ex 

 ample in that on the death of Mrs. Tempest: 



Her fate is whispered by the gentle breeze 

 And told in sighs to all the trembling trees ; 

 The trembling trees, in every plain and wood, 

 Her fate remurmur to the silver flood ; 

 The silver flood, so lately calm, appears 

 Swelled wkh new passion, and o erflows with tears ; 

 The winds and trees and floods her death deplore 

 Daphne, our grief ! our glory now no more ! 



All this is as perfectly professional as the mourning 01 an 

 undertaker. Still worse, Pope materialises and makes too 

 palpably objective that sympathy which our grief forces upon 

 outward nature. Milton, before making the echoes mourn for 

 Lycidas, puts our feelings in tune, as it were, and hints at his 

 own imagination as the source of this emotion in inanimate 

 things, 



But, O the heavy change now thou arf; gone ! 



In Windsor Forest we find the same thing again : 



