strides, he at least secures our confidence by the firmness of his step. To the examination of positions advanced by other men, he always brought a mind which neither prepossession had seduced nor malevolence polluted. He imposed not his own conjectures as infallible and irresistible truths, nor endeavoured to give an air of importance to trifles by dogmatical vehemence. He could support his more serious opinions without the versatility of a sophist, the fierceness of a disputant, or the impertinence of a buffoon; more than this, he could relinquish or correct them with the calm and steady dignity of a writer, who, while he yielded something to the arguments of his antagonists, was conscious of retaining enough to command their respect. He had too much discernment to confound difference of opinion with malignity or dullness, and too much candour to insult where he could not persuade. Though his sensibilities were neither coarse nor sluggish, he yet was exempt from those fickle humours, those rankling jealousies, and that restless waywardness, which men of the brightest talents are too prone to indulge. He carried with him, into every station in which he was placed, and every subject which he explored, a solid greatness of soul, which could spare an inferior, though in the offensive form of an adversary, and endure an equal, with or without the sacred name of friend. The importance of commendation, as well to him who bestows as to him who claims it, he estimated not only with justice, but with delicacy; and therefore he neither wantonly lavished it, nor withheld it austerely. But invective he neither provoked nor feared; and as to the severities of contempt, he reserved them for occasions where alone they could be employed with propriety, and where, by himself, they always were employed with effect,-for the chastisement of arrogant dunces, or censorious sciolists, of intolerant bigots in every sect, and unprincipled impostors in every profession. Distinguished in various forms of literary composition, engaged in various duties of his ecclesiastical profession, and blessed with a long and honourable life, he nobly exemplified that rare and illustrious virtue of charity which Leland, in his Reply to the Letter Writer,' thus eloquently describes :-' Charity never misrepresents, never ascribes obnoxious principles or mistaken opinions to an opponent, which he himself disavows; is not so earnest in refuting, as to fancy positions never asserted, and to extend its censure to opinions which will perhaps never be delivered. Charity is utterly averse to sneering, the most despicable species of ridicule, that most despicable subterfuge of an impotent objector. Charity never supposes that all sense and knowledge are confined to a particular circle, to a district, or to a country. Charity never condemns and embraces principles in the same breath; never professes to confute what it acknowledges to be just; never presumes to bear down an adversary with confident assertions. Charity does not call dissent insolence, or the want of implicit submission, a want of common respect.""

III-LITERARY SERIES.

Alexander Pope.

BORN A. D. 1688.-died A. D. 1744.

ALEXANDER POPE was born in Lombard-street, London, on the 22d of May, 1688. His father was a linen-draper, and had acquired considerable property, but, being a conscientious Catholic, he refused to invest any part of it in the public funds of a government he could not uphold, and hence his son succeeded to it much impaired. mother also was a Catholic.

His

She was the daughter of a Mr Turner of

York, two of whose sons died in the service of Charles I.

At the age of eight he was placed under the tuition of Taverner, a Roman priest; but it does not appear that his parents were very fortunate in their choice of tutors for their son; for he himself tells us that "he was always losing with his last masters what little he had got under the first." He was indeed sent for a time to a celebrated Catholic seminary at Twyford near Winchester; but he did not long remain there, having got himself dismissed for writing a lampoon upon one of the masters, his first effort in poetry. "I took," he says, "when I had done with my priests, (he had had four,) to reading by myself, for which I had very great eagerness and enthusiasm, especially for poetry. This I did without any design but that of pleasing myself, and got the languages by hunting after the stories in the poets I read, rather than read the book to get the language. I followed anywhere, as my fancy led me, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and woods, just as they fell in his way. These five or six years I still look upon as the happiest part of my life." An intelligent inmate of his father's family says of him :-"He set to learning Latin and Greek by himself, about twelve; and when he was about fifteen, he resolved that he would go to London, and learn French and Italian. We in the family looked upon it as a wildish sort of resolution; for, as his health would not let him travel, we could not see any reason for it. He stuck to it; went thither, and mastered both these languages with a surprising despatch. Almost every thing of this kind was of his own acquiring. He had masters indeed, but they were very indifferent ones, and what he got was almost entirely owing to his own unassisted industry." Ogilby's translation of Homer, and Sandys' Ovid, were his earliest and special favourites; but the boy ultimately became deeply enamoured with Waller, Spenser, and Dryden, and we are told that he entreated a friend to carry him to Button's coffee-house, which Dryden frequented, in order that he might feast his eyes with a sight of the living person of one of the poets whom he worshipped.

It does not appear that any of the learned professions were ever pressed upon his choice, or that his father in any way thwarted or restricted his devotion to literature. Before he was sixteen years of age he had attempted poetry in almost every walk of that creative art; he had written odes, satires, a comedy, a tragedy, and even an epic

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poem, of which Deucalion was the hero; and, to use his own language, thought himself the greatest genius that ever was." At sixteen he wrote his 'Pastorals,' which introduced him to the notice of Wycherley and some of the leading wits of the day. His next performance was his Essay on Criticism,' which no less a critic than Dr Johnson has characterized as displaying "such extent of comprehension, such nicety of distinction, such acquaintance with mankind, and such knowledge both of ancient and modern learning, as are not often attained by the maturest age and longest experience." It was written in 1709, and published in 1711; and certainly displays great precocity of intellect, maugre Lady Wortley Montague's observation that it was "all stolen from the ancient critics. lian, Rapin, Bossu, and others, and intended that his poem should be a depository of the soundest principles of criticism, as he could glean them from the study of these and other masters. It was in this essay he attacked Dennis, and first provoked that fierce hostility which ever afterwards existed betwixt the bard and the redoubtable critic.

The truth is, its author had studied Quinti

Pope had now entered upon a severe course of study, and pursued it with such intensity of application as to endanger his life: "After trying physicians for a good while in vain, he resolved to give way to his distemper, and set down calmly in a full expectation of death in a short time." Dr Radcliffe, however, cured him, by making him ride out every day; but his constitution received a shock from which it never recovered.

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His next pieces, in the order of their publication, were, 'The Messiah,' which first appeared in the 'Spectator,' in 1712,—the 'Ode on St Cecilia's day,'-the beautiful address of 'The Dying Christian to his Soul,'-and the Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.' A more remarkable piece than any of these was the Rape of the Lock,' a playful effusion suggested by a frolic of gallantry in which Lord Petre cut off a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair. "There is no finer gem than this poem," says Mr Jeffrey, "in all the lighter treasures of English fancy. Compared with any other mock-heroic in our language, it shines in pure supremacy for elegance, completeness, point, and playfulness. It is an epic poem in that delightful miniature which diverts us by its mimicry of greatness, and yet astonishes by the beauty of its parts, and the fairy brightness of its ornaments. In its kind it is matchless; but still it is but mock-heroic, and depends, in some meașure, for effect, on a ludicrous reference in our own minds to the veritable heroics whose solemnity it so wittily affects." The Temple of Fame' was first communicated to Steele in November, 1712, although it appears to have been written in 1710; and of Windsor Forest,' which followed in the order of publication, the first part was published in 1714. The Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard' was the last of the separate pieces with which the poet delighted the public about this time. It is a highly wrought piece of amatory declamation, founded upon the well-known story of the loves of these two unfortunate personages. Much of it is an imitation of Ovid, and the rest an amplification of part of the original letters.

Pope began his translation of the Iliad in 1712, and finished it in 1718. He had only gained a few trifling sums by his original poems; but Lintot, the publisher, offered him a magnificent sum for the pro

jected translation, and Pope engaged in it with the prospect of improving his fortune as well as advancing his fame. By his agreement with Lintot he received about £5,400 for this work, part of which he employed in buying an annuity, and the remainder in the purchase of a house at Twickenham, whither he persuaded his father to remove with him. The publication of the first volume of this translation was attended by a circumstance that for a while interrupted the friendship of Pope and Addison. This was the simultaneous appearance of another translation of the first book of the Iliad, with the name of Tickell attached to it. Pope was firmly persuaded that the translation was by Addison, and designed to hurt the sale of Lintot's book. The weight of circumstantial evidence is in favour of Pope's theory; but positive evidence exists that the copy placed in the printer's hands was in Tickell's handwriting, with corrections by Addison. Sir Richard Steele, and some other mutual friends, endeavoured to bring parties to an explanation and reconciliation; but at the interview they procured Pope was warm and irascible, Addison cool and contemptuous, and it only ended in their parting with mutual expressions of aversion and contempt. The obnoxious translation was not carried beyond the first book. The merits of this translation are well-known; it is elegant, but not exact,—a paraphrase rather than a translation, and laboured to a degree that often conceals the exquisite simplicity and truth of the original. Bentley's criticism of it is undeniably just: "It is a fine poem, but not Homer." Thus, in the scene where Venus leads Helen to Paris, and Helen struggles vainly against her passion, the first line of the following couplet belongs to the original, the second is added by the translator:

"She spoke, and Helen's secret soul was moved,

She scorned the champion, but the man she loved." Here, it has been well observed, the whole interest of the succeeding dialogue vanishes with this explanation; the passion of Helen becomes to our apprehension that of a libertine, and her remonstrance with Venus mere hypocrisy; "it is the illicit love of a modern lady of fashion, but it is not that of the amorous queen whom Homer saw in his imagination." Many similar instances of deviation, for the worse, from the original, might be pointed out. In his translation of the Odyssey, with which he proceeded soon after finishing the Iliad, Pope accepted the assistance of Fenton and Broome.

It has been frequently alleged that Pope loved money, and that his desire of enriching himself led him to engage in several foolish speculations, especially the South sea scheme, which ultimately abridged his finances considerably. On this subject we think the Quarterly reviewers have successfully defended the poet's reputation. After instancing Pope's noble conduct in endeavouring to persuade Lintot to give up his speculation of publishing the Iliad, when he was apprehensive of its failure, they go on to remark, "Pope, a conscientious Catholic, like his father, had no other means of income than the interest which he derived from lending money to individuals. This was the general practice of the times, which gave occupation to a body of men, now extinct, called scriveners, and the inventory of Pope's lawyer only proves how small was the poet's fortune. He lived on an annuity, and did not leave more than £3000; yet, such is the contagion of calumny, however absurd, that we find Mr Singer repeating the cuckoo note and reproaching the

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poet for being over-solicitous to accumulate money, risking on all kinds of securities.' The truth is, that Pope was apt to be extremely negli gent in all money concerns. Warburton tells us, that when Craggs gave him some South sea subscriptions, he was so indifferent about them as to neglect making any benefit of them. And the multiplied evidence of his domestic associates confirms the fact. 'Tis most certain, that nobody ever loved money so little as my brother,' says Mrs Racket, his sister-in-law. Mr Pope's not being richer,' says Martha Blount, may be easily accounted for; he never had any love for money. If he was extravagant in any thing it was his grotto.' Again, 'He did not know any thing of the value of money, and his greatest delight was in doing good offices to his friends. I used to know by his particular vivacity, and the pleasure that appeared in his face, when he came to town on such errands, or when he was employed in them, which was very often.' When his nephew refused a very handsome settlement in the West Indies, and said that fifty pounds a-year was all he wanted to make him happy, Pope, instead of using arguments to persuade him not to refuse so advantageous a proposal, immediately offered to settle that sum upon him. He refused a secret pension from Craggs; and, though a carriage was necessary to him, he used to say, that he had preserved his liberty without a coach.' Let us not forget, too, that when Savage was destitute, and abandoned by every one, he lived on a pension punctually paid by his friend. So much for the money-getting Pope."

The publication of an edition of Shakspeare, edited by Pope, added nothing to the fame of the latter. Pope was no fit editor for the mighty dramatist, and some of his decisions respecting the highest class of our poets, will now be regarded as hersies in our poetical creed. He talks of "Shakspeare's style as the styl of a bad age," and says, that "he generally used to stiffen his style with high words and metaphors for the speeches of his kings and great men; he mistook this," he adds, "for a mark of greatness. This is stronger in his early plays; but in his very last, his Othello, what a forced language has he put into the mouth of the duke of Venice!" Again, we find him strongly advising his friend Spence to republish Gorboduc among our ancient dramas. "This tragedy," says he, "is written in a much purer style than Shakspeare's was in several of his first plays. Sackville imitates Seneca's tragedies very closely, and writes without affectation and bombast, the two great sins of our old tragic writers." After this, we cannot be surprised to find the bard of Twickenham thus talking of Milton. "Milton's style, in his 'Paradise Lost,' is not natural; 'tis an exotic style. As his subject lies a good deal out of our world, it has a particular propriety in those parts of the poem; and when he is on earth, describing our parents in paradise, you see he uses a more easy and natural way of writing." He afterwards adds, "the high style that is affected so much in blank verse would not have been borne, even in Milton, had not his subject turned so much on such strange out-of-the-world things as it does." The truth is, Pope was more remarkable for the graces and felicities of diction than for the exuberance of his fancy, or his sensibility to the profounder emotions of our nature. We are ready to admit, with his generous critic in the Quarterly Review,' that Pope "wrought to the

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