POPE 369 



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 e en fools, by flatterers besieged, 

 And so obliging that he ne er obliged ; 

 Like Cato give his little Senate laws, 

 And sit attentive to his own applause, 

 &quot;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 were he ? 



With the exception of the somewhat technical image in the 

 second verse of Fame blowing the fire of genius, which too 

 much puts us in mind of the frontispieces of the day, surely 

 nothing better of its kind was ever written. How appli 

 cable it was to Addison I shall consider in another place. 

 As an accurate intellectual observer and describer of 

 personal weaknesses, Pope stands by himself in English 

 verse. 



In his epistle on the characters of women, no one who 

 has ever known a noble woman, nay, I should almost 

 say no one who ever had a mother or a sister, will find 

 much to please him. The climax of his praise rather 

 degrades than elevates. 



&quot; 0, blest in temper, whose unclouded ray 

 Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day, 

 She who can love a sister s charms, or hear 

 Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear, 

 She who ne er answers till a husband cools, 

 Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules, 

 Charms by accepting, by submitting sways, 

 Yet has her humour most when she obeys ; 

 Lets fops or fortune fly which way they will, 

 Disdains all loss of tickets or codille, 

 Spleen, vapours, or small-pox, above them all, 

 And mistress of herself, though china fall.&quot; 



The last line is very witty and pointed but consider what 

 an ideal of womanly nobleness he must have had, who 

 praises his heroine for not being jealous of her daughter, 

 Addison, in commending Pope s &quot; Essay on Criticism, &quot; 

 says, speaking of us &quot; who live in the latter ages of the 



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