NATURE IN THE NATURE POETS. 
43 
on Pope. Rather let us say that they were the great 
Brethren who " rode through the ringing lists, lords of the 
mellay," while successive generations looked on with mani- 
fold applause. At any rate, Pope is usually looked upon as 
the great example of the classical, formal, or artificial type 
of poetry in England. But his notices of external nature, as 
the}^ most certainly are to be found, so they must not be 
dismissed with anything like contempt. Nature was not 
his leading theme, not the moving mainspring of his work, 
but his was the master hand that when it touched was 
able to adorn. 
I will quote just one or two passages, which I think show 
that in this glorious field the great poet of society and of 
satire was not insensible to the beautiful and the true. 
Take just one from the " Temple of Fame," which has been 
justly praised : 
"So Zembla's rocks — the beauteous work of frost — 
Bise white in air, and glitter o'er the coast ; 
Pale suns, unfelt, at distance roll away, 
And on the impassive ice the lightnings play ; 
Eternal snows the growing mass supply, 
Till the bright mountains prop the incumbent yky : 
As Atlas fixed, the hoary pile appears, 
The gathered winter of a thousand years." 
I will only name the second passage, as occurring in the 
^' Messiah," where nature is united to man in the enjoyment 
of millennial happiness : a beautiful passage, which may 
probably have suggested a magnificent portion of the sixth 
book of Cowper's Task^ unless indeed both poets found the 
source of their inspiration in a fountain more divine. 
A third passage, which seems an echo of Milton's Pense- 
roso, and in which the outlook on nature is depicted as 
mightily influenced by the condition of the mind, is to be 
found in the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard : 
