hardly have written more easy. 14. That is, there should be as great a use of onomatopeia as possible; those words which imitate sounds should be employed, like shriek, purr, rumble, thunder, glide, etc. And the following lines exemplify the advice. 15. Ajax, one of the Greek leaders at the siege of Troy. 16. Camilla, a daughter of a Volscian king, and a servant of Diana; she was a splendid runner. 17. Here Pope himself employs an Alexandrine, and with excellent effect.

Ex. 3. Prepare the passage from The Rape of the Lock with the following notes:

1. The coffee-berries. 2. Spirits of wine. 3. In the older Latin sense of pleasant. The word has now been transferred to the person. 4. Porcelain. 5. The sense of smell. 6. Band of sylphs. 7. Smoking. The word fume is now chiefly employed in a metaphorical sense-in a fume in a rage. 8. Aware. 9. The old meaning of the Greek word is army-leading.

Ex. 4. Compare the two following translations of a celebrated passage from the eighth book of the Iliad, by (a) Pope and (b) Tennyson; state which seems to give the most distinct picture to the mind, and remark on the similarities or dissimilarities in phrase:

(a) POPE.

The troops exulting sat in order round,

And beaming fires illumined all the ground,
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole,
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head.
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies ;
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.
So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,
And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays,
The long reflections of the distant fires
Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires.
A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild,
And shoot a shady lustre o'er the field;
Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,

Whose umber'd arms by fits thick flashes send;
Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn,
And ardent warriors wait the rising morn.

(b) TENNYSON,

And these all night upon the bridge of war
Sat glorying; many a fire before them blazed.
As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart:
So many a fire between the ships and stream
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy,
A thousand on the plain; and close by each
Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire;
And champing golden grain, the horses stood
Hard by their chariots, waiting for the dawn.

or more literally

And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds
Stood by their cars, waiting the throned morn.

Ex. 5. Compare in the same way as the above the two translations by (a) Cowper and (b) Sotheby.

(a) COWPER.

Big with great purposes and proud, they sat
Not disarray'd, but in fair form disposed

Of even ranks, and watch'd their numerous fires.
As when around the clear bright moon, the stars
Shine in full splendour, and the winds are hush'd
The groves, the mountain-tops, the headland heights
Stand all apparent, not a vapour streaks

The boundless blue, and ether open'd wide;

All glitters, and the shepherd's heart is cheer'd;
So numerous seem'd those fires between the stream
Of Xanthus blazing, and the fleet of Greece
In prospect all of Troy,-a thousand fires,
Each watch'd by fifty warriors, seated near;
The steeds beside the chariot stood, their corn
Chewing, and waiting till the golden-throned
Aurora should restore the light of day.

*Or, ridge.

(b) SOTHEBY.

But Troy elate, in orderly array

All night around her numerous watch-fires lay.
As when the stars, at night's illumined noon,
Beam in their brightness round the full-orb'd moon,
When sleeps the wind, and every mountain height,
Rock, and hoar cliff, shine tow'ring up in light.
Then gleam the vales, and ether, widely riven,
Expands to other stars another heaven;
While the lone shepherd, watchful of his fold,
Looks wondering up, and gladdens to behold.
Not less the fires, that through the nightly hours
Spread war's whole scene before Troy's guarded towers
Flung o'er the distant fleet a shadowy gleam,
And quivering play'd on Xanthus' silver stream.
A thousand fires, and each, with separate blaze,
O'er fifty warriors cast the undying rays;
Where their proud coursers, saturate with corn,
Stood at their cars, and sniff'd the coming morn.

Ex. 6. Select from all the four translations (a) those phrases in which they agree; and (b) the passages or phrases in which each seems to be superior.

Ex. 7. Draw out a list of the phrases in the passages given from the Odyssey which are quite inadmissible in prose.

Ex. 8. Show the appositeness of the supposed rewards in the following lines from the Essay on Man (Ep. iv., 167–172).

What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,

The soul's calm sunshine, and the heart-felt joy,
Is virtue's prize: a better would you fix?
Then give humility a coach-and-six,

Justice a conq'ror's sword, or truth a gown,

Or public spirit its great cure, a crown.

Ex. 9. Select from the passages given in p. 301, all the instances of antithesis, and point out any that seem to be exaggerated.

Ex. 10. From the same passages select all the instances you can find of superfluous epithet.

Ex. 11. In the same passages note the cæsuras, and tabulate them thus:

Ex. 12. Comment on the following parallelisms:

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As to be hated, needs but to be seen.

-Essay on Man, Ep. ii., 217.

-Abashed the Devil stood,

And felt how awful goodness is, and saw

Virtue in shape how lovely.

-Par. Lost, iv., 849.

For truth has such a face and such a mien
As to be lov'd needs only to be seen.

-Dryden's Hind and Panther, i., 32.

Ex. 13. Comment on the following passage:

Behold the child, by nature's kindly law,
Pleas'd with a rattle, tickl'd with a straw;
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite:
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,
And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age;
Pleas'd with this bauble still, as that before,

Till tir'd he stops, and life's poor play is o'er.

Ex. 14. Compare the above passage (a) in tone, (b) in separate incidents and details, and (c) in phraseology, with Shakspeare's "Seven Ages of Man."

Ex. 15. Select passages from Pope's works to illustrate or to prove the truth of the following statements by Mr Lowell (My Study Windows, p. 316):

If to be the greatest satirist of individual men, rather than of human nature; if to be the highest expression which the life of the court and the ball-room has ever found in verse; if to have added more phrases to our language than any other but Shakspeare; if to have charmed four generations, makes a man a great poet,-then Pope is one."

1.

CHAPTER XVII.

DEFOE AND SWIFT.

ANIEL FOE, Defoe, or De Foe, was born in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, in the city of London, in the year 1661. His father was a butcher; and his grandfather a respectable yeoman, who farmed his own estate. At the age of fourteen he was sent to the Rev. Charles Morton's school, at Newington Green, in the north of London, with the view of becoming a Dissenting minister. He remained at school till he was nineteen; and this seems to have been the only formal education he ever received. He had, however, always been a hard reader; and he read all kinds of books, whatever came in his way. Soon after he left school, he appeared as an author; and his first production was a pamphlet against the "Inferior Clergy," with the title of "Speculum Crape-Gowniorum; or, a Looking Glass for the Young Academicks," etc. In 1685, he rode out to help in the great western rising in favour of the Duke of Monmouth; and, on the suppression of that rebellion, he had to go into hiding.

2. Soon after, he established himself in Freeman's Yard, Cornhill, as a wholesale hosier, a business which afterwards grew into that of general merchant. He was a strong political partisan, always on the side of the Whigs; and on the 4th of November, 1688, the Prince of Orange landed at Torbay, and Defoe and other friends of his cause went as far as Henley, in Oxfordshire, to meet him. "On this day," says Defoe, "he was born; on this day, he married the daughter of England; and on this day he rescued the nation from a bondage worse than that of Egypt." In 1692 he failed in business, and had to compound with his creditors; but it is said that he afterwards paid all of them to the last farthing. But, to avoid the then fearful horrors of a debtor's prison, he fled to Bristol, where he used to