man of taverns. But the wonder after all is, that, having such a superfœtation of art in him, he had still so much nature; and that the divine bully of the old English Parnassus could be, whenever he chose it, one of the most elegant of men.

POPE, IN SOME LIGHTS IN WHICH HE IS

NOT USUALLY REGARDED.

Unfaded interest of the subject of Pope and others.-Shakspeare not equally at home with modern life, though more so with general humanity.-Letters of Pope.-A wood-engraving a century ago.-Pope with a young lady in a stage-coach.Dining with maids of honour.—Riding to Oxford by moonlight.-Lovability not dependent on shape.-Insincerity not always what it is taken for.-Whigs, Tories, and Catholics. -Masterly exposition of the reason why people live uncomfortably together.-"Rondeaulx," and a Rondeau.

THOSE Who have been conversant in early life with Pope and the other wits of Queen Anne, together with the Bellendens, Herveys, Lady Suffolks, and other feminities, are never tired of hearing of them afterwards, let their subsequent studies be as lofty as they may in the comparison. We can no more acquire a dislike to them, than we can give up a regard for the goods and chattels to which we

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have been accustomed in our houses, or for the costume with which we associate the ideas of our uncles, and aunts, and grandfathers. They are authors who come within our own era of manners and customs,--within the period of coats and waistcoats, and snuff-taking, and the same kinds of eating and drinking; they have lived under the same dynasty of the Georges, speak the same unobsolete language, and inhabit the same houses; in short, are at home with us. Shakspeare, with all his marvellous power of coming among us, and making us laugh and weep so as none of them can, still comes (so to speak) in a doublet and beard; he is an ancestor," Master Shakspeare," one who says "yea" and "nay," and never heard of Pall Mall or The others are "yes" and "no" men— swearers of last Tuesday's oaths, or payers of its compliments-cousins, and aunts, and every-day acquaintances. Pope is " Mr. Pope," and comes to "tea" with us. Nobody, alas! ever drank tea with Shakspeare! The sympathies of a slip-slop breakfast are not his; nor of coffee, nor Brussells carpets, nor girandoles and ormoulu; neither did he ever take snuff, or a sedan, or a "coach" to the theatre; nor behold, poor man! the coming glories of silver forks. His very localities are no longer ours except in name; whereas the Cork-streets, and St. James's-streets, and Kensingtons, are still almost the identical places-in many respects really suchin which the Arbuthnots lived, and the Steeles

the opera.

lounged, and the Maids of Honour romped in the gardens at night time, to the scandal of such of the sisterhood as had become married.*

Another reason why one likes the wits and poets of that age is, that, besides being contemporary with one's common-places, they have associated them with their wit and elegance. We know not how the case may be with others, but this is partly the reason why we like the houses built a century ago, with their old red brick, and their seats in the windows. A portrait of the same period is the next thing to having the people with us; and we rarely see a tea-table at which a graceful woman presides, without its reminding us of "The Rape of the Lock." It hangs her person with sylphs as well as jewellery, and inclines us to use a pair of scissors with the same blissful impudence as my Lord Petre.+

* Vide the "Suffolk Correspondence,” vol. i. p. 333.

†The reader need scarcely be reminded that the "peer" who "spread the glittering forfex wide," was a Lord Petre, of the noble Catholic family still existing. As the poem was written in 1711, he must have been "Robert, seventh Baron Petre," who succeeded to the title in 1707, and died in 1713. He married the year after the writing of the poem, and died the year following; so that his life seems to have been "short and sweet." It is pleasant to see, by the peerages, that the family intermarried in the present century with that of the Blounts of Mapledurham-the friends of Pope; and that one of the sisters of the bride was named Arabella, probably after Arabella

There is a third reason, perhaps, lying sometimes underneath our self-love; but it takes a sort of impudence in the very modesty to own it; for who can well dare to say that he ever feels oppressed by the genius of Shakspeare and his contemporaries! As if there could be any possibility of rivalry! Who ventures to measure his utmost vanity with the skies? or to say to all nature, "You really excel the existing generation?" And yet something of oppressiveness in the shape of wonder and admiration may be allowed to turn us away at times from the contemplation of Shakspeare or the stars, and make us willing to repose in the easy chairs of Pope and one's grandmother. We confess, for our own parts, that as

"Love may venture in,

Where it dare not well be seen;"

or rather, as true, hearty, loving, vanity-forgetting love warrants us in keeping company with the greatest of the loving, so we do find ourselves in general quite at our ease in the society of Shakspeare himself, emotion apart. We are rendered so by the humanity that reconciles us to our defects, and by the wisdom which preferred love before all things. Setting hats and caps aside, and coming to

Fermor, the Belinda of the poet. A sense of the honours conferred by genius gives the finishing grace to noble families that have the luck to possess them.