426 POPE. 



give one stanza of it, describing the palace of the 

 Fairy: 



M The walls of spider's legs were made, 

 Well mortised, and finely laid; 

 (He was the master of his trade 

 It curiously that builded:) 

 The windows of the eyes of cats, 

 And, for the roof, instead of slats 

 *T is covered with the skins of bats, 

 With moonshine that are gilded." 



In the last line the eye and fancy of a poet are recog- 

 nized. 



Personally we know more about Pope than about any 

 of our poets. He kept no secrets about himself. If he 

 did not let the cat out of the bag, he always contrived 

 to give her tail a wrench so that we might know she 

 was there. In spite of the savageness of his satires, his 

 natural disposition seems to have been an amiable one, 

 and his character as an author was as purely factitious 

 as his style. Dr. Johnson appears to have suspected his 

 sincerity ; but artifice more than insincerity lay at the 

 basis of his character. I think that there was very 

 little real malice in him, and that his " evil was wrought 

 from want of thought." When Dennis was old and 

 poor, he wrote a prologue for a play to be acted for his 

 benefit. Except Addison, he numbered among his friends 

 the most illustrious men of his time. 



The correspondence of Pope is, on the whole, less in- 

 teresting than that of any other eminent English poet, 

 except that of Southey, and their letters have the same 

 fault of being labored compositions. Southey's are, on 

 the whole, the more agreeable of the two, for they 

 inspire one (as Pope's certainly do not) with a sincere 

 respect for the character of the writer. Pope's are 

 altogether too full of the proclamation of his own 

 virtues to be pleasant reading. It is plain that 



