POPE. 367 



and driving vandals off the stage. And in the following 

 verses the image is helplessly confused : 



&quot; Kind self-conceit to some her glass applies, 

 Which no one looks in with another s eyes, 

 But, as the flatterer or dependant paint, 

 Beholds himself a patriot, chief, or saint.&quot; 



The use of the word &quot;applies&quot; is perfectly un-English; and 

 it seems that people who look in this remarkable glass see 

 their pictures and not their reflections. Often, also, when 

 Pope attempts the sublime, his epithets become curiously 

 unpoetical, as where he says, in the Dunciad, 



&quot; As, one hy one, at dread Medea s strain, 

 The sickening stars fade off the ethereal plain. &quot; 



And not seldom he is satisfied with the music of the verse 

 without much regard to fitness of imagery ; in the &quot; Essay 

 on Man,&quot; for example : 



&quot; Passions, like elements, though born to fight, 

 Yet, mixed and softened, in his work unite ; 

 These t is enough to temper and employ ; 

 But what composes man can man destroy ? 

 Suffice that reason keep to Nature s road, 

 Subject, compound them, follow her and God. 

 Love, Hope, and Joy, fair Pleasure s smiling train, 

 Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain, 

 These mixed with Art, and to due bounds confined, 

 Make and maintain the balance of the mind.&quot; 



Here reason is represented as an apothecary compounding 

 pills of &quot;pleasure s smiling train&quot; and the &quot;family of pain.&quot; 

 And in the Moral Essays, 



&quot; Know God and Nature only are the same ; 

 In man the judgment shoots at flying game, 

 A bird of passage, gone as soon as found, 

 Now in the moon, perhaps, now under ground.&quot; 



The &quot;judgment shooting at flying game&quot; is an odd image 

 enough ; but I think a bird of passage, now in the moon 

 and now underground, could be found nowhere out of 

 Goldsmith s Natural History, perhaps. An epigrammatic 

 expression will also tempt him into saying something with 

 out basis in truth, as where he ranks together &quot;Macedonia s 



