ALLITERATION.-The alliteration in Pope is especially striking where it emphasizes an antithesis or a balance.

A maudlin Poetess, a rhyming Peer (16).

A friend in exile, or a father, dead (355).

But alliteration is an obvious device, and Pope's ear was also sensitive to the subtler effects of the repetition of consonants and vowels, usually called tone color. For examples of such melodiousness, the reader might turn to the Third Pastoral or to the Essay on Criticism, lines 337 to 383.

RHYMES. Many of Pope's rhymes are defective, according to our present pronunciation. In such cases Pope is sometimes careless, sometimes correct according to the pronunciation of his day, sometimes borrowing the pronunciation of the Seventeenth century poets.