Christopher Wren, too famous, indeed, not to excite the petulance of mediocrity. There was much controversy regarding the socalled letters of Phalaris, which Temple had praised in 1692 and Charles Boyle had edited in 1695. Bentley, who knew that he could prove these letters to be spurious, was led into contemptuous controversy about them, and the learned world rang with a very pretty quarrel. Bentley's first essay appeared in 1697, and the rapid exchange of paper bullets went on until 1699. Atterbury, Temple, Garth, Aldrich (even Swift, a little out of date), a host of wits and scholars, were on the one side, and Bentley alone on the other. Yet Bentley conquered all along the line of his foes; nor since 1699 has Phalaris the letter-writer existed. In April 1699 Bentley was made Master of Trinity, and the rest of his career— his insolent struggle for college supremacy, his irregular progress as a scholar, his final victory and repose-belong to the following century. He wrote very little more in English prose, and we are not here concerned to pursue his fascinating adventures any further. The vernacular style of Bentley is rough-hewn, colloquial, shot through with fiery threads of humour, the ideal style for confident and angry polemic. His position as a scholar is summed up in Professor Jebb's statement that his is "the last name of first-rate magnitude which occurs above the point at which Greek and Latin studies begin to diverge." Bishop Stillingfleet is reported to have said that Bentley wanted only modesty to be the most remarkable person in Europe; he was certainly, in the absence of modesty, the most considerable English critic of his time. CHAPTER IV POPE AT the head of a list of " departed relations and friends" which Pope kept, he wrote, "1700 Maji primo obit, semper venerandus, poetarum princeps, Joannes Dryden," although he only saw that poet once, and never knew him. It was the literary relationship that he recognised. King John was dead,-long live King Alexander. Yet between the death of Dryden and the first public appearance of Pope there came an interregnum of nine years, during which any man who was strong enough might have seized the sceptre. But the only pretender was Addison, whose absence of poetic genius is plainly proved by the fact that though Dryden had been ready to recognise him, and though Pope was still a child, he failed, without any lack of will on his own part, to strike a commanding figure on the empty stage. If Addison had never come under the influence of Swift and Steele, he would in all probability never have discovered his true power. He would have gone on writing political copies of verses and academic memoirs on medals, and would have held a very inconspicuous place in the history of literature. At thirty-five Addison had written most of his existing poetry, and was yet, properly speaking, undistinguished. Joseph Addison (1672-1719) was the son of a Dean of Lichfield, who had written two good books on Morocco. He was educated at the Charterhouse, where he found Steele, and at Queen's College, Oxford, whence he proceeded to Magdalen and became a fellow. He stayed at Oxford until 1699, cultivating polite literature in a dilettante way. In 1693 Addison came forward with a fluent address To Mr. Dryden, and began, under the supervision of that poet, to join the band of young men who were placing the Latin classics in the hands of those who read none but English verse. In April 1694 he produced a brief Account of the Greatest English Poets, in verse; the poets were Chaucer and Spenser, at whom he sneered, and Cowley, Milton, Waller, Dryden, and Congreve, whom he praised. In this brief copy of verses there is room for a compliment to "godlike Nassau," which showed the author's Whig bias. In 1695 Addison published a poem To His Majesty [William III.], in a strain of grovelling eulogy. He describes noble Nassau as " Reeking in blood, and smeared with dust and sweat, Meanwhile Addison had been producing a series of very clever mock heroic Latin poems, and a serious one on the Peace of Ryswick. These he published at Oxford in 1699, and so closed his academic career with great applause. Montague, the ideal patron, whose encouragement was to do so much for letters, secured Addison a pension and sent him abroad. In 1701 he wrote to Montague, now Lord Halifax, a Letter from Italy, which Mr. Courthope thinks the best of Addison's poems. It is very much in the manner of Waller. He was then writing his cold tragedy of Cato, and in 1704 he celebrated Marlborough's victory at Blenheim in The Campaign, "a gazette in poetry," as Warton called it; after this he wrote but little verse, except the graceful opera of Rosamund in 1706. Addison was totally without lyric gift. He never excelled except in the heroic couplet. As to his versification, it has been considered to mark the transition between Dryden and Pope; but, in the opinion of the present writer, it shows a curious absence of all influence from Dryden; and if it marks any transition at all, it is that between Waller and Pope. There is no better example of this to be met with than the lines on Marlborough's action at Blenheim : 66 “'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved, That in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, The Campaign might have been written by Waller himself, who, it may be remembered, invented the "gazette in rhyme." In short, the English verse of Addison is the poetry of a scholar and a skilful man of letters, not of a poet. An unfortunate young clergyman, John Pomfret (1667-1703), possessed more simplicity and a truer poetic instinct than Addison. His Choice, in praise of a sequestered life, appeared in 1699, and was a mild herald of the return to nature-study. It was very popular, and was long admired with exaggeration. Here is a specimen of that "old sweet household dream" which Leigh Hunt liked so well, and helped to resuscitate: "If Heav'n the grateful liberty would give, That I might choose my method how to live, In blissful ease and satisfaction spend, Better, if on a rising ground it stood; On this side fields, on that a neighb'ring wood. Methinks 'tis nauseous, and I'd ne'er endure A little garden, grateful to the eye, Should be with all the noblest authors grac'd." Pomfret was poor, and when at last, in 1703, he obtained a good The Red-streak as supreme, whose pulpous fruit, he seems to prophesy of Thomson's Seasons. Philips was studying to be a doctor when a life was cut short at thirty-three which promised well for English literature. The greatest artist in verse, and perhaps the greatest poet, with whom we have to deal in the present volume, Alexander Pope (1688-1744), was born in Lombard Street, May 21, 1688, the son of a Catholic linen-draper. His father retired from business immediately after the poet's birth to a place called Binfield, near Wokingham. Pope, with features carved as if in ivory and with the great melting eyes of an antelope, carried his brilliant head on a deformed and sickly body. Partly for this reason, and partly because of his position as a Catholic, the boy had no regular education. He was taught by the family priest, went to two |