with the exception of Shakespeare, who has
written so many lines apt for quotation and
continually quoted, and that Pope should have
displayed this merit in a youthful work is a note-
worthy illustration of precocious genius. Two
years after the publication of the "Essay" ap-
peared "Windsor Forest," which is modelled on
Sir John Denham's "6 Cooper's Hill," a poem
still remembered for an apostrophe addressed to
the most famous of rivers :-

"O, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!

Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull,
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full."

Pope himself never composed easier lines than
these, which were written in the days when Cow-
ley, a far greater poet than Denham, was exhibit-
ing a learned incapacity for writing simply, and
instructing other poets how to entangle their
verses with obscurity and conceits. The best that
can be said for "Windsor Forest" is that it con-
tains a few happily-turned lines, but it is marred
by feeble pedantry, and displays Pope's inability
to deal poetically with the common objects of
nature. It pleased Swift, who recommended the
poem to Stella; but Swift, like Pope, was empha-
tically a poet of the town. The " Temple of
Fame," founded upon Chaucer's "House of
Fame," was a greater failure still, but in 1714
the publication of the "Rape of the Lock" in an
enlarged form (the first edition had appeared in
1712), exhibited the genius of Pope in its brightest
and liveliest mood. The origin of the " Rape of
the Lock" may be stated in a word or two. Lord
Petre having cut off a lock of Arabella Fermor's
hair, the lady was offended, and a quarrel arose
in consequence between the two families. Pope

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was asked by a common friend to act the part of a peacemaker, and to this trifling cause we are indebted for the most charming heroi-comical poem in the language, or, by the general consent of critics, in any language. The wit, the fancy, and the form are alike exquisite, and one cannot but regret that the contemptuous treatment of women which degrades so much of Pope's poetry is allowed also to taint this delightful work. That Miss Fermor, the heroine, whom the poet wished to propitiate, should have objected to some of his coarse allusions is not surprising. Yet Pope affected to be surprised. "The celebrated lady herself," he wrote, "is offended, and which is stranger, not at herself, but me. Is not this enough to make a writer never be tender of another's character or fame?" Two more poems written in this early and successful period may be mentioned here, the "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady," and "Eloisa to Abelard.”

For felicity of language, and for the eloquent rhetoric which may readily be mistaken for imaginative verse, these poems claim no slight distinction. It is impossible to read them without feeling the mastery over his instrument exercised by the poet. The "Elegy" was formerly regarded as a story with a strong foundation in fact. The lady according to one report was in love with Pope, and would have married him, but her guardian, thinking such a match beneath her, sent her to a convent, and "a noose and not a sword put an end to her life." Other strange reports of this poetically famous lady are related by Pope's biographers, but an examination of the Caryll correspondence by the late Mr. Dilke has proved that these tales are "fantastic fictions," and that the poem is a poetical invention. The "Eloisa,"

despite the objectionable passages justly condemned by Hallam, is in a higher strain, and is almost the only illustration in Pope's verse of an emotion that verges upon pathos. "The words," says Hazlitt, "are burning sighs breathed from the soul of love," but in reading them the consciousness of the poet's art dries up the fount of tears. Whether the Latin Letters upon which Pope founded his epistle are authentic has been considered doubtful, but for the purposes of poetry their genuineness is unimportant. The misfortunes of the two distinguished lovers are recorded in history, and the facts of the story afford sufficient ground for the exercise of the poet's imagination.

And now, before recording the event in Pope's poetical life which brought him fortune as well as fame, it will be well to mention a few personal incidents in his biography.

Queen Anne, intellectually one of the dullest of women, has by the irony of fate had her name inseparably linked to the wits of her age. Addison and Swift, Prior and Gay, Steele, Arbuthnot and Pope, and other writers of smaller mark, are known as the " Queen Anne men," though most of them lived far into the Georgian period. When the queen died in 1714, Pope was twenty-six; he had won his first laurels, and was full of the consciousness of power. We are to think of him as still living with his parents at Binfield, but his name was now well known in the town, and there he was sometimes to be seen at the coffee-houses. Addison was then the literary dictator at Button's, as Dryden had been at Will's, and Steele, one of the most impulsive, reckless, and sweetest-natured of men, brought his illustrious friend and Pope together. The acquaintance began in 1712.

"I

66

as well as I liked

liked him then," Pope said, any man, and was very fond of his conversation." When "Cato" appeared, a year later, Pope wrote the Prologue, and for a time the poet who had previously associated with the Tories at Will's, mingled with the Whig wits at Addison's coffeehouse, saying that he scorned narrow souls of all parties. The friendship with Addison was, however, soon clouded. Dennis the critic, a man of vigorous sense, but cursed with a vile temper, having abused "Cato," Pope thought to do Addison a good turn by abusing him. At the same time, he wished to revenge a private quarrel of his own. Dennis, after the coarse fashion of the age, but not without considerable provocation, had sneered at Pope's deformity, and now his violent attack on "Cato" gave Pope the opportunity he desired. He therefore published a "Narrative" descriptive of the critic's frenzy, which Addison, far from approving, reprobated in strong language, and thus there began a breach between the two wits, which culminated in the most brilliant piece of satire that ever fell from the pen of Pope. His prose "Narrative" is both coarse and dull, but no satirist ever stung more sharply in verse, and the character of Atticus is destined to live with the fame of Addison.

Another indication of a misunderstanding between these rival wits seems to have occurred with regard to "The Rape of the Lock." The first issue of the poem was without the machinery of the sylphs and gnomes, afterwards suggested to Pope by a book on the mysteries of the Rosicrucians. He mentioned to Addison his design to enlarge the poem, and Addison, who could not anticipate the exquisite art by which the poet would enhance its beauty, naturally advised him to let the

"delicious little thing" alone. This advice, which was certainly given in good faith, made Pope think, either at the time or afterwards, that Addison was jealous of his fame. The breach between the two was destined to widen later

on.

66

Pope's literary jealousy was the source of another quarrel. Ambrose Philips, whose occasional verses gained for him unjustly the sobriquet of "Namby-Pamby," having written some feeble pastorals, which were highly praised in the Guardian," Pope was aggrieved that his rival should be described as the chief pastoral poet since Spenser, while his own name was not mentioned. His "Pastorals" had appeared in the same volume with those of Philips, and it vexed him all the more to be told in the "Guardian" that there had been only four true masters of pastoral poetry in above two thousand years-Theocritus and Virgil, Spenser and Philips. Pope therefore hit upon a strange device for asserting his claims. He wrote a fresh paper on pastoral poetry, in which, apparently at his own expense, he gave high praise to Philips, while quoting at the same time some of his most absurd passages, and the

The

best extracts he could select from his own. paper was sent to the "Guardian" anonymously, and inserted by Steele, who failed to see its purport. Philips was indignant, and hanging up a birch rod at Button's, swore that if Pope ventured to the coffee-house, he would chastise him with it. "The poet," writes Mr. Courthope, 66 may have thought he was likely to keep his word; at any rate, about this period he apparently discontinued his attendance at the club, and began to resume the company of his old associates at Will's." Pope never forgot an enemy, and