ideas not to be found in the original at all, and conveying absolute contradictions and physical impossibilities; as, for instance, in the celebrated description of a moonlight night, so severely yet justly criticised by Wordsworth : "As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light; In the above verses there are at least a dozen offences against nature and reality, and these contradictions are in no case to be found in the Greek; for Homer, like Shakspeare, is invariably and minutely true to nature. They both knew well that the works of God are more beautiful than those of art. It would be superfluous to insist here upon the observation of the immense degree in which the effect of a work of fiction depends upon and is modified by the tone of the language in which it was written: and this increases the difficulty of producing a successful translation in exact ratio with the antiquity, and consequently with the merit, of the work. It was well remarked by a man of refined taste, who had been obliged, by ignorance of the Greek language, to make acquaintance with the works of Homer first through the medium of translation, that he experienced a much more intense impression of the power and majesty of the great Ionian from the bold and barbarous literal Latin version usually affixed to the school editions of the bard, than from the most elaborate efforts at transfusing Homer into modern poetry; and that when afterwards enabled to compare those early impressions with the effect of the original Greek, he still retained his opinion. And the fact is SO. The rude Latin prose is a cast of the immortal statue: its grain is coarse, indeed, and its value is insignificant, but it preserves the precise outline of the godlike lineaments of the original. Our modern poetical translations are copies, smooth, polished, and elabo rate; but feeble, timorous, and cold. These observations will explain the immense inferiority of all poetical imitations and paraphrases of the grander and more oratorical passages of the Scriptures. The rudǝst taste instantly perceives the infinite superiority of the concise and burning words of the Hebrew, closely and literally rendered in the modern versions, even though thus fidelity be often attained at the expense of the genius and idiomatic character of the language into which such version has been made. After this great effort of industry and poetical skill, which was received with a degree of enthusiasm, honourable, indeed, to Pope, but often expressed in terms so strong as to prove how little his age really understood or appreciated the peculiar merits of Homer, our poet published his Essay on Man,' a work of metaphysical and moral philosophy, intended to form part of a vast poetical system or cycle of those sciences projected by Pope. The philosophy of this work is neither very profound, nor the reasonings and conclusions (except such as are truisms) either very convincing or very just. The poem, in short, furnishes an additional proof of the natural incompatibility between the higher order of poetry and pure abstract ratiocination, and the want of harmony that results from their forcible union; for the reasoning is generally found to injure the effect of the verse, at least as much as the ornament of verse detracts from the vigour and cogency of argument. But if any writer was ever、 calculated to surmount this natural want of accordance between means and end, with which we have just reproached didactic poetry in general, that writer was Pope. The abundant richness of ideas, the novelty, variety, and appropriateness of illustration, the sparkling point and neatness of expression, and the perfect finish and harmony of versification which the four epistles composing this work so prodigally display, prove that, if he has not succeeded in establishing a model and perfect exemplar of didactic poetry, it was only because such an object can never be perfectly attained by human genius. The argument of this brilliant composition may be briefly stated :The first Epistle treats of Man in his relation to the Universe, showing the imperfections of our judgment founded upon our limited acquaintance with the order of nature, and suggesting that a higher degree of endowment would only have been productive of pain and misery—a conclusion which, like many other of Pope's deductions, involves a paradox. In the second, Man is treated as an Individual, i. e. with relation to himself; and the poet shows that the passions and desires are given him with an evident benevolence of intention, as by them the stock of happiness is augmented-nay, as without them happiness itself would be inconceivable and impossible. The third Epistle views Man in his relation to Society; and in the fourth and last the poet discusses the various notions respecting Happiness. Throughout the whole of this masterly work it is impossible to decide whether we are most to admire the point and neatness of the argument, the abundant wealth of illustration, collected from a wide extent of reading and observation, or the enchanting harmony and finish of the language and versification. The couplet is carried to its highest perfection; and though an instrument of but limited compass, comparatively to the organ-like blank-verse of Milton, or the myriad-voiced and ever-changing dramatic versification of the elder drama, Pope has proved that in the hand of a master even this imperfect instrument could "discourse most eloquent music.' In 1727 there appeared three volumes of Miscellanies, in prose and verse, the composition of that distinguished society of which Pope and Swift in poetry, and Arbuthnot in humorous prose, were the most brilliant ornaments. The associates, all bound together by the closest ties of friendship, and by a perfect similarity of tastes, principles, and prejudices, worked together so completely that it is impossible to assign to each, at least with much certainty, the portions composed by the respective fellow-labourers. The work is throughout sparkling with satire, wit, and humour-at least that humour which consists rather in an acute perception of the ludicrous and contemptible than in a deep sympathy with the human heart. The severity and occasional personality of the satire raised round Pope a storm of literary hatred, in many cases envenomed by religious and political enmity; and on these assailants Pope was afterwards to inflict a memorable vengeance. One article of the Miscellanies was a portion of a prose comic romance, or written caricature, intended to ridicule the vain pursuits of ill-directed erudition, and the solemn puerilities of scientific pedantry. Of this work, entitled the 'Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus,' the idea was better than the execution; many of the follies ridiculed being such, according to Johnson's excellent criticism, as had long ceased to be prevalent, and there being a general tone of coarseness and farcical exaggeration prevailing throughout the work. Arbuthnot, there can be but little doubt, was the principal author of this not very successful jeu d'esprit; but he was much happier in his ludicrous "History of John Bull,' which, though referring only to temporary politics, and principally directed against Marlborough, has a vein of irresistible drollery which time cannot deprive of its charm. Indeed, highly as almost all the members of Pope's brilliant coterie were endowed with wit (and perhaps at no time in the history of English literature was that quality more abundantly displayed), the amiable and learned Arbuthnot was the only person, with the exception of Addison, who exhibited much of the sentiment properly called humour. These qualities, so nearly allied in many respects -for Humour bears the same relation to Wit as Imagination does to Fancy—yet are very rarely found much developed in the same period of literature much more rarely in the same individual. One is the tropical plant, dazzling in colour, but scentless and unfruitful; the other the rich and life-sustaining vegetation of the temperate zone. They are respectively the gem and the flower— or rather, perhaps, the gem and the seed. Pope, as we have just hinted, took a terrible revenge on those whose envy, whose jealousy, or whose indignation had been aroused by the burning irony and withering sarcasm embodied in numberless passages of the Miscellanies. His wit, keen and polished as was its edge, was not always wielded by the hand of justice; and, as the Chinese proverb pithily expresses it, the dart of contempt will pierce the shell of the tortoise. The obscurest intellects, the coldest and most insensible of souls, will be roused into anger by the point of a sarcasm; and Pope, one of whose chief and very natural errors was the notion that all true virtue, as well as all pure taste and sound morality, was concentrated in the small circle of his friends, raised around him a cloud of enemies, most of them individually insignificant, and many personally contemptible, but al infuriated by the most intense animosity against the reigning wit and his clique. This nest of hornets Pope determined to destroy at one stroke, and he composed his admirable satire of 'The Dunciad,' the Iliad of the Dunces. Taking for his key-note the MacFlecknoe of his great predecessor, Dryden, he has given us in this satire one of the most sweeping, fierce, and brilliant philippics, in which, under the mask of a reprobation of bad writing and bad taste, Genius ever revenged the injuries of Self-Love. The plot or fable of this admirable satire is the election of a new monarch to fill on earth the throne of Dulness, and the various games and trials of skill performed by the bad writers of the day to do honour to the event. In this manner the poet has been enabled to introduce an incredible number of individuals, most of them, indeed, deserving of contempt in a literary point of view, but some of whom are attacked with a ferocity of personality totally indefensible on either merely literary or moral grounds. In richness of ideas, in strength of diction, and in intensity of feeling, this production surpasses all that Pope had previously done, and is perhaps the finest specimen of literary satire which exists in any language in the world. The whole vocabulary of irony is exhausted, the whole universe of contempt is ransacked. We find the combined merits of the most dissimilar satirists the wild, fearless, inventive, picturesque extravagance of Aristophanes, the bitter irony and cold sarcasm of Lucian, the elegant raillery of Horace, and Juvenal's strange union of moral severity and grim pleasantry. It is curious to read these brilliant records of literary animosity, and to reflect upon the unenviable immortality which Pope's genius has conferred upon the meanest of scribblers and the most despicable of pamphleteers. Like the straws, the empty shells, and excrements of dead animals, which the lava has preserved for uncounted centu ries, and in which the eye of the geologist beholds the records of past convulsions, these names have been preserved uninjured through a period of time when many things a thousand times more valuable have perished for ever; and they exist, and will continue to exist, as long as the English language shall endure, imperishable but valueless memorials-the trash of literature, vitrified by the lightning of indignant genius. In the fierce contentions which agitated the declining years of Pope there can be no doubt that the satirist suffered far more than his victims, and that the deepest wounds dealt on others by the keen and polished weapon of his sarcasm, were as nothing in comparison with the agonies which nerved his own arm to wield that resistless weapon. Genius, in its very definition, implies a peculiar and exquisite degree of sensibility, or at least sensitiveness; and it is but just that, when the highest gift of God is perverted to selfish ends, to avenge insulted vanity, to humiliate, to blacken, and to crush, the very exercise of that endowment should necessarily entail upon its perverter a bitter and inevitable retribution. God is love; and his highest gift to man can only be fitly employed in deeds of love and charity. Personal invective and personal hate, though masked under the specious pretext of a zeal for good taste, is hardly a less reprehensible employment for high intellectual powers than sensuality or blasphemy; and it is fortunate that in this instance, as in all others, the crime brings its punishment along with it. Between the years 1733 and 1740 Pope gave to the world his 'Satires, Epistles, and Moral Essays,' addressed for the most part to his distinguished literary friends, Bolingbroke, Arbuthnot, &c. These admirable compositions, considered separately, are in most cases directed against some prevailing vice or folly, and it is perhaps in them that the poet's genius is seen in its fullest splendour. Glowing with fancy and a rich profuseness of illustration, adorned with every splendour which art or industry could confer, they are. noble and imperishable monuments of knowledge, of acuteness of observation, of finish, and of facility; for the poet had now attained that mastery in his art when the very elaboration of the workmanship is concealed in the apparent ease of the execution. They abound in happy strokes of description, in exquisite appropriateness of phrase, and a thousand passages from these charming compositions have passed into the ordinary language of the poet's countrymen a sure test of the value of a work. Having been less exposed in the composition of this work to the evil influences of personal and literary enmity, Pope has avoided that air of malignant ferocity which defiles so much of the 'Dunciad;' and the tone of the Satires is in general far more Horatian; that is, far more in accordance with good taste, good breeding, and good nature. In 1742 Pope added a fourth book to the 'Dunciad,' describing the final advent on earth of the goddess of Dulness, and the prophesied millennium of ignorance, pedantry, and stupidity. In this he has exhibited a gorgeousness of colouring and a fertility of invention which would enable him to claim no mean place among merely picturesque poets. During the following year our indefatigable satirist, moved by the restless caprice of his literary enmity, published a new edition of the four books of the 'Dunciad,' having deposed from the throne of Dulness its former occupant, Theobald, a tasteless pedant and commentator on Shakspeare, whose place in "that bad eminence" was now supplied by |