LESSONS IN KM ; MM I LITERATURE. 



My Imly fall* to play : to bad her ohanoe, 



lit rrj.iiir it ; takes a bribe from Frunc* : 

 >UBO impeach him; Couiuicubjr harangue*; 

 iruke him, and Sir llalaam hangs, 

 i, con, and daughter, Satan, are thy own, 

 His wealth, yet doarer, forfeit to the crown. 

 The devil and the king divide tbe prise, 

 And ad Sir Balaam curses Qod and dies." 



The most important work of puro satire which Pope produced 

 tlio " I'lmriu.l,'' a sort of mock-heroic poem in which tho 

 glory and triumph of Dnlnoss, tho election of tho King of tho 

 noes, and tho flolomnitios on tho occasion are related wit) 

 tho utmost seriousness, and with extreme humour, sometimes 

 mixe.l with a good deal of coarseness both of idea and expres- 

 sion. The plan of tho poem was, no doubt, in part suggested 

 \ den's satire of " MaoFlocknoe," though the two works 

 have very little in common. Tho first book of the " Dnnciad 

 opens with an excellent description of the Empire of Dulness, anc 

 then goes on to relate the election of a successor to the throne 

 of Dulness, in place of Eusden, the city poet, lately deceased. 

 In the first edition of the "Dnnciad," Pope assigned the bad 

 eminence to Theobald, a man who unquestionably merited the 

 title of dull, and who had been one of the many antagonists ol 

 Pope, and his rival as an editor of Shakespeare. In the second 

 rsion of tho poem the whole drift of the satire is changed, 

 and in place of Theobald we find as King of the Dunces Colley 

 fibber, a writer of plays very popular in their day, and who, with 

 all his faults, certainly by no means deserved to bo called dull. 

 In the second book, which is the most ingenious, the most 

 humorous, and the most severe of the whole satire, the poet, in 

 mutation of the games in which the ancient epic poets took so 

 much pleasure, gives an inimitable description of the contests 

 and trials of skill held in honour of the election of the monarch. 

 In the third and fourth books we have an account of various 

 scenes at the court of Dulness ; and a wonderful picture in 

 mock-heroic strains of the gradual extinction of Sense, Wit, 

 and Learning, and of the power of Dulness enveloping the 

 whole world. This satire gave Pope an opportunity of doing 

 two things first, of entering his genuine protest against 

 and thoroughly exposing the bad taste, useless learning, and 

 misapplied ingenuity which he saw around ; and, secondly, of 

 taking a signal revenge upon all those in the world of letters 

 from whose attacks, provoked or unprovoked, he had suffered. 

 Not one of them escapes ; not one of them but is exhibited in a 

 light equally ludicrous and contemptible. 



But there are fow of Pope's poems, on matters of everyday 

 life, in which his powers of satire are not to be traced. The 

 lines in his "Epistle to Arbuthnot" in which ho sketches, 

 with wonderful discrimination and but pardonable exaggeration, 

 the strength and the weakness of Addison are well known, 

 but not too well known to bear quotation : 



" Were there one whose fires 

 True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires 5 

 Blessed with each talent, and each art to please, 

 And born to write, converse, and live with ease < 

 Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, 

 Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, 

 View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, 

 And hate for arts that caused himself to rise ;' 

 Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 

 And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer ; 

 "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 suspicions 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 ; 

 While wits and Templars every sentence raise, 

 And wonder with a foolish face of praise : 

 Who but must laugh, if such a man there bef 

 Who would not weep, if Atticus wero he ? " 



In its bright and sparkling humour, the most akin to the 

 satires among Pope's poems is tho delightful "Rape of the 

 Lock ; " indeed, in one sense, it might be colled a satire. Tho 

 occasion of the piece was the adventure of a young nobleman 

 who presumed furtively to cut a lock of hair from the head 



of a fair lady. Tho incident led to MI estnutgWMitt bd 

 the two families, anil 1'ope is Mid to hava written hi* 

 with the benevolent intention of bringing about a i 

 an object in which he succeeded. 



It has already been Mid that Pop*, like all tbe poet* of UM 

 ame school, U, for one no great M be wo, deficient in tbe power 

 of depicting passion or moving our sympathies. Tbe two aowt 

 important poems, in which tbe interest is mainly founded upon 

 tbe pathetic, are the " Elegy on tbe Death of an Unfortunate 

 Lady," and the " Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard." Tbe first of 

 these is full of beauty and tenderness. But it reveals too little, 

 discloses too little of the melancholy story to which it refers, 

 and it is too studied and regular to appeal very strongly to tbe 

 feelings of the reader. The " Epistle of EloUa to Abelard " is 

 of far higher power. It is founded in part upon tbe real 

 letters of Eloisa to Abolard, written after long years of separa- 

 tion ; and, like them, it is supposed to be written from tbe 

 convent of which she has long been at the head. To express tbe 

 tempest of passion in tho hour of its violence would have been 

 a task very uncongenial to the genius of Pope. A passion, not 

 dead indeed, but subdued, chastened, controlled by long yean 

 of penitence and self-discipline, was a subject better suited to 

 his powers ; so that this is one of tho finest of his poems. 



It is generally true in England, at least that those poets 

 who have touched most powerfully the chords of human 

 passion have also been most sensitive to the influence of 

 external nature, and the keenest observers of its beauties. 

 The poets of Queen Anne's day, as they were deficient in 

 power over the emotions, were no less wanting in genuine 

 appreciation of external nature. They are at home only in the 

 city, in the club, among men and women living in a highly 

 artificial state of culture. And this characteristic is very ap- 

 parent in Pope's country poems, such as the " Pastorals " and 

 Windsor Forest." No one can fail to admire them for tbe 

 beauty of their diction and versification. Their ideas, too, are 

 always appropriate. But they are unreal. They have nothing 

 of the open air about them, none of the true breath of the green 

 field and the wood. 



There remains one great work of Pope which we cannot leave 

 unnoticed his translation of Homer. Of all the poet's works 

 this was the one from which he derived incomparably the 

 largest pecuniary profit ; and it probably contributed more 

 than any other to establish his fame. Nor is this remarkable. 

 Pope translated the "Iliad" and one-half of the "Odyssey;" 

 and his translation is, undoubtedly, a great poem. The actual 

 sense of the original is throughout preserved with substantial 

 accuracy ; and tho language and versification are faultless. 

 And in Pope's day, while men's taste in poetry was what it then 

 was, no one looked for anything more ; a version which repro- 

 duced the old Greek bard more faithfully would not have been 

 admired or appreciated. But, in truth, no great poet was ever 

 so ill qualified to translate Homer as Pope, just as no genera- 

 tion of Englishmen wero ever so ill qualified fairly to estimate a 

 translation of Homer as the generation among whom Pope 

 lived. The finish, the antithetical neatness of Pope's diction, 

 the even monotony of his verse, with its uniform rhyming 

 couplets, are the very opposite of Homer's characteristics. 

 The result is that, as was said by a contemporary critic, 

 .hough the poem is a great poem, " it is not Homer." In tone, 

 >pirit, and character it is wholly unlike tho original. 



Pope's prose satires need little comment. Some of his 

 papers in the Scriblerns series are very humorous, but they a*o 

 altogether inferior to his poetical satires. 



John Gay was one of the most eminent of the minor poets in 



;he society which surrounded Pope and Swift. Witty, genial, 



cindly, and affectionate, he was not only popular with the 



public, but singularly beloved by his friends. He received 



more than one fortune, but always lost them ; made much 



money by his works, but never kept it ; was a favourite with 



.he great, but never received any public advancement; and 



' died unpensioned with a hundred friends," having for many 



years lived as a kind of favoured pensioner in the household of 



lie Duke and Duchess of Queensberry. His most important 



works are a series of pastorals published under tbe name of 



' The Shepherd's Week ; " his Fables ; " Trivia," a burlesque 



>r satire upon London life ; and, above all, the " Beggar's 



)pera." This last was the most successful piece that bad ever 



been acted. It became the rage in a moment, U said to nave 



