POPE. 299 



Here his first lays majestic Denham sung, 



There the last numbers flowed from Cowley s tongue ; 



O early lost, what tears the river shed 



When the sad pomp along his banks was led ! 



His drooping swans on every note expire, 



And on his willows hung each muse s lyre ! 



In the same poem he indulges the absurd conceit that, 



Beasts urged by us, their fellow-beasts pursue, 

 And learn of man each other to undo ; 



and in the succeeding verses gives some striking instances of 

 that artificial diction, so inappropriate to poems descriptive of 

 natural objects and ordinary life, which brought verse-making to 

 such a depth of absurdity in the course of the century. 



With slaughtering guns, the unwearied fowler roves 

 Where frosts have whitened all the naked groves ; 

 Where doves in flocks the leafless trees o ershade, 

 And lonely woodcocks haunt the watery glade ; 

 He lifts the tube and levels with his eye, 

 Straight a short thunder breaks the frozen sky : 

 Oft as in airy rings they skim the heath, 

 The clamorous lapwings feel the leaden death. ; 

 Oft as the mounting larks their notes prepare, 

 They fall and leave their little lives in air. 



Now one would imagine that the tube of the fowler was a tele 

 scope instead of a gun. And think of the larks preparing their 

 notes like a country choir ! Yet even here there are admirable 

 lines 



Oft as in airy rings they skim the heath, 

 They fall and leave their little lives in air, 



for example. 



In Pope s next poem, the Essay on Criticism, the wit and 

 poet become apparent. It is full of clear thoughts, compactly 

 expressed. In this poem, written when Pope was only twenty- 

 one, occur some of those lines which have become proverbial j 

 such as 



A little learning is a dangerous thing ; 



For fools rush in where angels fear to-tread ; 



True wit is Nature to advantage dressed, 



What oft was thought, but ne er so well expressed. 



For each ill author is as bad a friend. 



In all of these we notice that terseness in which (regard being 

 had to his especial range of thought) Pope has never been 

 equalled. One cannot help being struck also with the singular 

 discretion which the poem gives evidence of. I do not know 

 where to look for another author in whom it appeared so early, 

 and, considering the vivacity of his mind and the constantly 

 besetting temptation of his wit, it is still more wonderful. In 



