points of contrast with the measured, even, highly-trained, smoothlypolished, temperament of Pope. What did Lord Byron think of Pope? He terms him, "The most perfect and harmonious of poets-he, who, having no fault, has had reason made his reproach. It is this very harmony which has raised the vulgar and atrocious cant against him (Lord Byron was fond of using strong language): - because his versification is perfect, it is assumed that it is his only perfection; because his truths are SO clear, it is asserted that he has no invention; and because he is always intelligible, it is taken for granted that he has no genius. I have loved and honoured the fame and name of that illustrious and unrivalled man, far more than my own paltry renown, and the trashy jingle of that crowd of schools and upstarts who pretend to rival or even surpass him. Sooner than a single leaf should be torn from his laurel, it were better that all which these men, and that I, as one of their set, have ever written, should line trunks."

There is another and more general testimony to the reputation, at least, if not to the actual merits of Pope, which may be here mentioned; this is, the extent to which his lines are quoted as familiar maxims and illustrations of the daily incidents of life, and the common meanings of men,- quoted often, probably, by persons who have little knowledge or recollection where the words are to be found. I am inclined to believe that, in this respect, and it is one not to be considered slightingly, he would be found to occupy the second place, next, of course, to the universal Shakspeare himself. Allow me to cite a few instances.

When there has been a pleasant party of people, either in a convivial or intellectual view. I wish we might think it of our meeting this evening we say that it has been

"The feast of reason, and the flow of soul."

How often are we warned-I have sometimes even heard the warning addressed to Mechanics' Institutes, that —

"A little learning is a dangerous thing."

How often reminded,

"An honest man's the noblest work of God."

Or, with nearly the same meaning,

"Who taught the useful science, to be good."

There is a couplet which I ought to carry in my own recollection— "What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?

Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards."

It is an apt illustration of the office of hospitality,
"Welcome the coming, speed the going guest."

How familiar is the instruction,

"To look, through Nature, up to Nature's God."

As rules with reference to composition,

"The last and greatest art—the art to blot."
"To snatch a grace beyond the reach of art;

And then as to the best mode of conveying the instruction,——
"Men must be taught as if you taught them not."

There is the celebrated definition of wit,

"True wit is nature to advantage dressed;

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

Do you want to illustrate the importance of early education? You observe

"Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined."

wish to characterise ambition somewhat favourably? You

"The glorious fault of angels and of gods."

Or describing a great conqueror,—

"A mighty hunter, and his prey was man."

Do you seek the safest rule for architecture or gardening? "Consult the genius of the place in all;

Or, with exquisite good sense,

""Tis use alone that sanctifies expense,

And splendour borrows all her rays from sense.'

Are you tempted to say any thing rather severe to your wife or daughter, when she insists on a party of pleasure, or an expensive dress? You tell her,

"That every woman is at heart a rake."

And then if you wish to excuse your own submission, you plead –

"If to her share some female errors fall,

Look on her face, and you'll forget them all."

How often are we inclined to echo the truth.

"That fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

And this too,

"That gentle dulness often loves a joke."

Who has not felt this to be true?—

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blest."

When an orator, or a Parliamentary candidate

in which last capacity I have often appeared before some of you-wishes to rail at absolute governments, he talks of

"The monstrous faith of many made for one."

Then there are two maxims, one in politics and one in religion, which have both been extensively found fault with; but the very amount of censure proves what alone I am now attempting to establish, not the truth or justice of Pope's words, but their great vogue and currency

"For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administered is best:
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right."

It is now time to judge Pope from his own works, by which, of course, his place in the estimate of posterity must finally stand. I shall pass hurriedly by his earlier compositions. He tells us himself of the precocity of his genius:

"I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came."

But his very youthful productions, on the whole, appear to be more remarkable for their dates than their intrinsic merits. He wrote his "Pastorals" at sixteen. Independently of the age at which they were written, they appear to me trivial, forced, out of keeping with the English soil and life to which they are avowedly assigned. One piece of praise is justly their due: after the pub

lication of these verses by a youth-we may call him a boy-of sixteen, I do not see why a rugged or inharmonious English verse need ever again have been written; and what is more, I believe very few such have been written. Mr. Macaulay says on this point, "From the time when the 'Pastorals' appeared, heroic versification became matter of rule and compass, and, before long, all artists were on a level." It was surely better that this level should be one upon which the reader could travel smoothly along, without jolts or stumbles.

In the short poem of the "Messiah," I do justice to the stately flow of verse upon the highest of human themes. Both Dr. Johnson and Dr. Warton give it a decided preference over the "Pollio" of Virgil, which is concerned with topics of close and wonderful similarity. I do not know how far they are right, but I feel quite sure that both the "Pollio" of Virgil and the "Messiah" of Pope fall immeasurably below the prose translation of Isaiah in our Bibles. "Windsor Forest" appears to be on the whole a cold production. It contains some good lines on the poet Earl of Surrey

"Matchless his pen, victorious was his lance,
Bold in the lists, and graceful in the dance

an extremely pretty account of the flight and plumage of a pheasant, a very poetical list of the tributaries of the Thames, and some well-sounding verses on the Peace of Utrecht, then recently concluded, from which in the early part of this year I was induced to quote some lines which I thought very apposite to the proposed Exhibition of Industry of All Nations, at London, in 1851:

"The time shall come, when, free as seas or wind,
Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind,
Whole nations enter with each swelling tide,
And seas but join the regions they divide;
Earth's distant ends our glories shall behold,

And the new world launch forth to meet the old."

The Odes written by Pope are decidedly of an inferior caste. I need not say how inferior to the immortal "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day," by Dryden, who preceded - or how inferior to Gray or Campbell, who have followed him. The Ode, perhaps, of every species of poetical composition, was the most alien to the genius

of Pope; its character is rapt, vehement, abrupt; his is composed, polished, methodical; his haunt would not be the mountain top or the foaming cataract, but the smooth parterre and the gilded saloon. You may prefer one bent of mind, as you would one form of scenery; the question with which I now invite you to deal is, not in what style Pope wrote, but in the style which he chose, and for which his nature best fitted him, how far he excelled.

Among the very youthful productions of Pope, there were also some adaptations from Chaucer, Ovid, and one or two more ancient authors; in point of execution they are only distinguished by their smooth versification, and the matter of them ought to have forbidden the attempt.

In speaking as I have done of many of Pope's earlier compositions, however I may assume myself to be a devoted admirer partisan, if you should so please to term it -I conceive that I have at least shown that hitherto I am no indiscriminate praiser, who thinks that everything which proceeds from his favourite must be perfect. On the contrary, though his facility in writing verses. was almost precocious, the complete mastery of his art seems to have been gradually and laboriously developed. "So regular my rage," was the description which he has himself applied to his own poetry. It was not so much "the pomp and prodigality of heaven," which have been allotted to a few; it was rather, in the edifice of song which he has reared, that nicety of detail, and that completeness of finish, where every stroke of the hammer tells, and every nail holds its exact place.

His early friend and admirer, Walsh, seems accurately to have discerned the path of excellence which was open for him, when he told him that there was one way in which he might excel any of his predecessors, which was by correctness, for, though we had before him several great poets, we could boast of none that were perfectly correct. Pope justified the advice; and if correctness is not the highest praise to which a poet can aspire, it is no mean distinction to show how an author can be almost faultlessly correct, and almost as invariably the reverse of all that is tame, mean, or flat.

There come, however, among compositions which in any one. else would most strictly be called early, a few which will not bear to be dismissed with such a hasty or superficial notice. The "Essay on Criticism" was written when he was twenty or twenty-one years