Now Chartres, at Sir Robert's levee, Provided Bolingbroke were dead!' Which Pope must bear, as well as I. How those I love my death lament. St. John himself will scarce forbear Suppose me dead; and then suppose 'The Dean, if we believe report, 'Sir Robert Walpole The Dublin edition describes Chartres as an infamous vile scoundrel, grown from a footboy, or worse, to a prodigious fortune.' 2 William Pultney, who went over from Walpole to Bolingbroke. As for his works in verse and prose, Nor can I tell what critics thought 'em: To cure the vices of mankind: Exposed the fool, and lash'd the knave. 'He never thought an honour done him, 'Perhaps I may allow the Dean Had too much satire in his vein; Yet malice never was his aim; He lash'd the vice, but spared the name; No individual could resent, Where thousands equally were meant; His satire points at no defect, Those who their ignorance confest, 'He knew a hundred pleasing stories, With all the turns of Whigs and Tories: Was cheerful to his dying day; And friends would let him have his way. 'He gave the little wealth he had To build a house for fools and mad; And show'd by one satiric touch, No nation wanted it so much.' ALEXANDER POPE. [ALEXANDER POPE was born in Lombard Street, in the city of London, 1688. His father was a wholesale linen-draper, who, having realised a modest competence, retired to the country to live upon it. Pope's youth was spent at Binfield in the skirts of Windsor Forest. Pope was brought up a Catholic, his father, though the son of a beneficed clergyman of the Established Church, having become a convert to Catholicism during a resi dence on the continent. On the death of his father, Pope, who had largely increased his inheritance by the profits of his translation of Homer, established himself at Twickenham. Here he resided till his death in 1744, employing himself in writing, in embellishing his grounds, of five acres, and in intercourse with most of the wits, and other famous men and women of his time, among whom Gay, Swift, Arbuthnot, and Lord Bolingbroke were his especial intimates. Pope was deformed, and sickly from childhood, a d his constant ill-health made his temper fretful, waspish, and irritable. Notwithstanding these defects of character he secured the warm attachment of his friends. Bolingbroke said of him that he never knew a man who had so tender a heart for his particular friends. Warburton, after spending a fortnight at Twickenham, said of him, He is as good a companion as a poet, and, what is more, appears to be as good a man.' Pope's principal works are-Pastorals, published in 17c9; Essay on Criticism, 1711; Pollio, 1712; Rape of the Lock, 1714; Translation of Homer's Iliad, 1715-18; Edition of Shakspeare, 1725; Translation of Homer's Odyssey, 1726; Dunciad, 1st form, 1728; Epistle to the Earl of Burlington, 1731; On the Use of Riches, 1732; Essay on Man, Part 1, 1732; Horace, Sat. 2. 1. imitated, 1733; Epistle to Lord Cobham, 1733; Epistle to Arbuthnot, 1735; Horace, Epistle 1. 1. imitated, 1737; Dunciad, altered and enlarged, 1742. His works were collected by his literary executor, Bishop Warburton, and published in 9 volumes in 1751.] Pope is not only the foremost literary figure of his age, but the representative man of a system or style of writing which for a hundred years before and after him pervaded English poetry. The writers in this style are sometimes spoken of as the 'school of Pope.' But the title is a misnomer. A school coexists along with other schools from which it is distinguished by some special characteristics; all the contemporaneous schools taken together bearing the common and more general stamp of their age. During the period now under review, which extends, speaking roughly, from the Restoration to the French Revolution, the whole of English literary effort, but especially poetical effort, has one aim and is governed by one principle. This is the desire to attain perfection of form; a sense of the beauty of literary composition as such. It was the rise within the vernacular language of that idea, which impregnating the Latin language as written and spoken in the fifteenth century had produced the revived, neolatin literature of the Renaissance. Pope himself (Sat. and Ep. 5), in describing this 'manner,' spoke of it as French, and attributed it to the imitation of French fashions introduced into England at the Restoration. 'We conquer'd France, but felt our captive's charms; Britain to soft refinements less a foe, Wit grew polite, and numbers learn'd to flow.' De Quincey (Works, vol. 9) expatiates upon the deficiencies of this explanation of a revolution in literary taste. Certainly the court of Louis XIV exercised a great influence in all matters of taste. But this influence of fashion ceased when the ascendency of France was broken by the war of the Spanish succession, while the direction which had been impressed upon English poetry continued to dominate it till towards the close of the eighteenth century. A better denomination for the period of our literature which extends from the Restoration to the French Revolution is 'the classical period.' And this is not to be taken to mean that English writers now imitated the Greek and Latin writers, or consciously formed themselves upon classical models, as the Latinists of the Renaissance imitated Cicero and Virgil. English writers had begun to perceive that there was such an art as the art of writing ; that it was not enough to put down words upon paper anyhow, provided they conveyed your meaning. They found that sounds were capable of modulation, and that pleasure could be given by the arrangement of words, as well as instruction conveyed by their import. The public ear was touched by this new harmony, and |