the wits. But it could not touch, it never touched, the national heart, like the poetry of Cowper or of Burns.

Career. Pope was born in London, but passed a large part of his life in retirement at Twickenham, so that he is often called the Bard of Twickenham. His talents evinced themselves very early in life, so that, to use his own words, he "lisped in numbers." His publications gained for him a handsome competence, and his house was a meeting-place for the leading literary men of the times. eral quarrels with persons who had been intimate friends, such as Lady Montagu, and waged throughout life a sharp warfare against second and third rate authors.

He had sev

In person, Pope was small and unpretending, very delicate in health, not remarkable for his conversational powers, but rather husbanding his resources for his books and letters. One of the few attractive traits in Pope's character was his devotion to his aged mother. He was by profession a Catholic. But his religion sat easily upon him, so that he has been set down by some as a secret Protestant, through Warburton's influence, and by others as a follower of Bolingbroke.

Works. - Pope's chief works, given in nearly the order of their composition, are: Pastorals, written by him at the age of sixteen; Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Messiah; Translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey (in which latter he was aided by Broome and Fenton); Essay on Man; and The Dunciad.

Correspondence. Pope's Correspondence was published in part during his lifetime. It was alleged by Pope that the letters had been obtained by the publisher surreptitiously; but it has since been shown that there was a secret understanding between the two, Pope taking this way to screen himself from the imputation of vanity.

Change in the Estimate of Him. There was a time when Pope's poetry was considered the model of thought and expression. Throughout the entire eighteenth century his lines were regarded by all except his personal enemies as stamped with profound genius. The modern school of criticism, however, has put a juster estimate upon Pope's merit. It has denied him any equality with the great poets, with Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, and scarcely even allowed him the first place among the second-rate poets.

Faults and Excellencies. - Pope's works are marred by conventionalism and would-be neatness. Rarely if ever does the poet rise to any flight of passion. His uniform use of the rhyming heroic couplet be

comes excessively monotonous; every couplet and line is so nicely turned and so carefully balanced, that the reader longs for an occasional irregularity. Pope is undoubtedly witty and sarcastic. The tendency to point and polish, which disqualified him for being a true epic poet, has made him the most successful epigrammatist in the language. No one has ever equalled him in the art of turning a couplet. The reader will search in vain in Pope for any of those broad strokes whereby a truly grand poet delineates a character or suggests a profound truth, any up-welling of emotion, any daring flight of imagination, any sweet play of humor. Still, Pope will remain what he has ever been, an elegant writer of English. His correctness in the structure of phrases and the choice of words, his avoidance of everything bizarre, render him a safe model of study for those whose style is still crude. Pope's verse can scarcely be a stimulant, but it may prove a wholesome corrective.

Character of Particular Works.- Pope's Translation of Homer is accurate enough; and yet it is not Homer, for the simple reason that Homer is the naive poet par excellence and Pope is the perfect type of the conventional poet. There is not the slightest touch of sympathy between them. The Essay on Man contains an immense number of excellent precepts couched in excellent couplets, any one of which by itself would be perfect, but which taken together form a sermon rather than a poem. The Rape of the Lock displays more fancy and conceit than imagination. Abelard and Eloise find the fire of their passion dampened materially by the Popean measure. The Dunciad is probably Pope's best work. In it he had the opportunity of exhibiting to the full his peculiar powers of satire, and the success of his poison-tipped, winged couplets may be estimated by the commotion and wrath which they aroused. His Correspondence is interesting, but the reader's enjoyment is spoiled by the ever recurring impression that the letters are not real letters the hearty expression of individual feeling but compositions studied with the public in view.

"In the interval between the end of Milton and the beginning of Pope the art of song had suffered one of its many metamorphoses. It had changed from an inspired message into an elaborate chime of words. Milton, grand, harmonious, and musical as is his utterance at all times, was a man overflowing with high thought and lofty meaning; with so much to say to his generation that the mode of saying it might almost have been expected to become indifferent to him. It never did so, because of the inborn music of the man, that wonderful sense of melody in which he has never been surpassed, if, indeed, ever equalled, in the English tongue. But notwithstanding this great natural gift, his subject was the thing pre-eminent with him; and as his subject was of the highest importance and solemnity, so his verse rose into organ-floods of severest sweetness. Dryden, who succeeded him, did not possess a similar inspiration. He had no message to the world to speak of, and yet he had a great deal to say. Accordingly with him the subject began to lower and the verse to increase in importance. In Pope this phase of poetry attained its highest development. With him everything gave way to beauty of expression. No prophetic burden was his to deliver. The music of the spheres had never caught his ear. Verse was the trade in which he was skilled, not the mere mode of utterance by which a mind overflowing with thoughts of heaven or earth communicated these thoughts to its fellows. He was an admirable performer upon an instrument the most delicate and finest-toned which humanity possessed. Hs power on it was such that the most trivial motif, the most mean topic, became, in his hands, an occasion of harmony. We confess without hesi. tation that the music of Pope's verse does not enchant and enthral our particular ear,

but it did that of his own generation. It belonged, as does so much of the poetry of France, to an age more marked by culture than by nature; building upon certain doctrines and tenets of literary belief; trusting in style as in a confession of faith, and establishing as strict a severance between the orthodox and heterodox in literature, as ever a community of ecclesiastics has done in a religious creed. Perhaps that was the only period of English literature in which an Academy would have been possible. Pope made himself the poetic standard of the age. His contemporaries were measured by it as by a rule; and no one came up to the height of the great master. He gave to his generation a stream of melodious words such as might have made the whole country sweet, but which, unfortunately, being often employed to set forth nauseous or trifling subjects, gave no nobility to the mind of his period, but only a mathematical music-something which touched the ear rather than the heart. But in Pope his school came to a close. It was impossible to do anything finer, more subtle or more perfect in the art of combining words. If there had been given to him a message to deliver, probably he would not have reached to such perfection in the mode of delivering it; but as it was, he brought to its highest fulfilment and completion the poetical style of which he was capable."- Blackwood.

Matthew Prior, 1664-1721, was a poet of considerable celebrity in the reign of Queen Anne.

Career. Prior was adopted by his uncle, a tavern-keeper of London. In this position he attracted the attention of the guests by his familiarity with Horace, and gained the patronage of the Earl of Dorset, who sent him to Cambridge. Here he graduated, was introduced into public life, and rose rapidly to distinction. He went over to the Tory party in 1701 or 1702, and subsequently became Ambassador at Paris. When the Whigs regained power, Prior was thrown into prison on the charge of treason, but was released, after two years, without a trial.

Works. — Prior's writings are not numerous. The best known longer works are: The Country Mouse and the City Mouse, written by Prior and Montagu together, being a Satire upon Dryden's Hind and Panther; his Carmen Seculare, a panegyric on William III.; Solomon, and Alma, written in prison. His short, fugitive pieces, however, are generally considered preferable.

Character of his Works. The more elaborate poems are heavy, and spoiled by the conceits of the age. But the tales and apologues are light, graceful, sparkling, and in the tone of good society. His Alma was generally supposed to be an imitation of Hudibras.

"Johnson speaks slightingly of his lyrics; but, with due deference to the great Samuel, Prior's seem to me among the easiest, the richest, the most charmingly humorous of English lyrical poems. Horace is always in his mind, and his song and his philosophy, his good sense, his happy, easy turns and melody, his loves and his epicureanism, bear a great resemblance to that most delightful and accomplished master."- - Thackeray.

John Gay, 1688-1732, was one of several poets whose

names and fortunes are linked in history with those of Pope and Swift.

Career. Gay was of good family, but being reduced in circumstances was apprenticed to a silk-dealer. Disliking the employment, he obtained his release, and embarked in literary life. His first publication, Rural Sports, was dedicated to Pope, but did not meet with much success. Next year he obtained the appointment of domestic secretary to the Duchess of Monmouth.

First Literary Success. The Shepherd's Week, in Six Pastorals, was intended to ridicule Ambrose Philips, but contained so much genuine comic humor, and such pleasant pictures of country life, that it became popular on its own account, rather than for its ridicule of another. The Fan, and Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London, followed. The latter is in the mock-heroic style, giving an account of the dangers encountered in walking through the crowded streets of the metropolis.

Dramatic Attempts.—Gay next tried his hand at comedy, and brought out The Wife of Bath, but it failed of success. Another play, What D'ye Call It? was more successful, and induced him to try still another, Three Hours after Marriage, which was a failure. An edition of his Poems by subscription, however, brought him £1000, and he received a present of South Sea Stock, which was valued at £20,000, but he unfortunately held on to it, until the bubble burst. Still another drama, The Captives, barely escaped total failure. At last, on the suggestion of Swift, Gay wrote The Beggar's Opera, in which the principal characters are thieves and highwaymen. It had unbounded success, being played for sixty-three nights, and still holding its place occasionally upon the stage. Another opera of the same sort, called Polly, and intended as a sequel to the first, was forbidden to be played, on account of its political allusions. Gay, profiting by the exasperation thus produced, published Polly by subscription, and received £1200 from the sale of it.

The Fables. Before writing the Beggar's Opera, and while in straitened circumstances, he wrote a volume of Fables. They were composed at the suggestion of the Princess of Wales, and primarily for the instruction of her young son, the Duke of Cumberland. They are the most pleasing of all his works, and the only ones that have any enduring hold upon the public mind, except his ballad of Black-Eyed Susan. The Beggar's Opera is decidedly objectionable, on account of the looseness of its morals. It is simply employing the arts of music and song to make the life of a highwayman appear agreeable and attractive, and its representation has always been followed by an increase of crime. Gay has been called, indeed, the “Orpheus of Highwaymen."

Ambrose Philips, 1675-1749, was a poet and dramatic writer of considerable note.

Philips was the author of some pastorals, a tragedy called The Distressed Mother, drawn largely from Racine, a translation of Sappho's

Hymn to Venus, and a series of "poems of short lines," or characterpictures of the leading personages of the day.

Like others of his times, Philips became involved in a literary quarrel with Pope. In this, as might be expected, Philips fared badly. Pope ridiculed him severely, and applied to him the novel epithet of "Namby Pamby," which has since been adopted into the language of vituperation.

"Of the Distressed Mother not much is pretended to be his own, and therefore it is no subject of criticism; his other two tragedies, I believe, are not below mediocrity, nor above it. The pieces that please best are those which, from Pope and Pope's adherents, procured him the name of Namby Pamby, the poems of short lines, by which he paid his court to all ages and characters, from Walpole' the steerer of the realm,' to Miss Pulteney in the nursery. The numbers are smooth and sprightly; and the diction is seldom faulty. He has added nothing to English poetry, yet at least half his book deserves to be read."- Dr. Johnson.

Thomas Parnell, 1679-1718, is another of the minor British poets of the early part of the eighteenth century.

Parnell was a friend of Swift, Bolingbroke, and Pope; he was a native of Ireland, and he held a living in the Irish Church. His poems are not numerous, nor do they all rank very high. A few, however, such as The Hermit, Death, and the Hymn to Contentment, were much admired by Johnson and Goldsmith for their pure imagery and graceful versification, and they maintain a permanent position among the choice pieces of English literature.

Nicholas Rowe, 1674-1718, has a respectable rank as a poet, but owes his chief celebrity to his connection with Shakespearian criticism.

Career. Rowe studied law for awhile, but, on the death of his father, gave himself up wholly to letters. He occupied several subordinate situations under the Government, and was made poet laureate in 1714.

Rowe's literary activity was threefold: as an editor, a translator, and a poet.

As an editor Rowe is known by his edition of Shakespeare, with an account of the dramatist's life. This edition, although not possessing great intrinsic merit, is noteworthy as the beginning of that long series of critical editions of Shakespeare which reaches down to our own day. As such, Rowe's work plays a conspicuous part in the history of Shakespeare criticism,

Rowe translated several works from the Latin and the Greek. The only one of them that has attained distinction is his Pharsalia, from the Latin of Lucan. This