FOOTNOTES:

'In vain, in vain,—the all-composing HourResistless falls; the Muse obeys the Power.She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold,Of Night primæval and of Chaos old!Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay,And all its varying rainbows die away.Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,The meteor drops, and in a flash expires,As one by one at dread Medea's strain,The sickening stars fade off the etherial plain;As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest,Closed one by one to everlasting rest;Thus at her felt approach and secret might,Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,Mountains of Casuistry heaped o'er her head!Philosophy that leaned on Heaven before,Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more;Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!See Mystery to Mathematics fly!In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,And unawares Morality expires.Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restored;Light dies before thy uncreating word;Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;And universal Darkness buries All.'

The publication of theDunciadshowed Pope where his main strength as a poet lay. That the writers he had attacked, in many instances without provocation, should resent the ungrateful notoriety conferred upon them was inevitable. In self-defence, and to add to the provocation already given, he started a paper called theGrub Street Journal, which existed for eight years—Pope, who had no scruple in 'hazarding a lie,' denying all the time that he had any connection with it.

His next work of significance,The Essay on Man, a professedly philosophical poem by an author who knew little of philosophy, was published in four epistles, in 1733-4. Bolingbroke's brilliant, versatile, and shallow intellect had strongly impressed Swift, and had also fascinated Pope. It has been commonly supposed that theEssayowes its existence to his suggestion and guidance. The poet believed in his philosophy, and had the loftiest estimate of his genius. In the last and perhaps finest passage of the poem he calls Bolingbroke the 'master of the poet and the song,' and draws a picture of the ambitious statesman as beautiful as it is false. In Mark Pattison's Introduction toThe Essay on Man,[21]which every student of Pope will read, he objects to the notion that the poet took the scheme of his work from Bolingbroke, observing that both derived their views from a common source.

'Everywhere, in the pulpit, in the coffee-houses, in every pamphlet, argument on the origin of evil, on the goodness of God, and the constitution of the world was rife. Into the prevailing topic of polite conversation Bolingbroke, who returned from exile in 1723, was drawn by the bent of his native genius. Pope followed the example and impulse of his friend's more powerful mind. Thus much there was of special suggestion. But the arguments or topics of the poem are to be traced to books in much vogue at the time; to Shaftesbury'sCharacteristics(1711), King on theOrigin of Evil(1702), and particularly to Leibnitz,Essais de Théodicée(1710).'

In admitting that Pope followed the impulse of a more powerful mind, Mr. Pattison asserts as much perhaps as can be known with certainty as to Bolingbroke's influence, but it is reasonable to believe that the close intercourse of the two men did immensely sway the more impressionable, and, so far as philosophy is concerned, the more ignorant of the two. Mr. Pattison also overlooks the fact that Pope confessed to Warburton that he had never read a line of Leibnitz in his life. That the poet acknowledges his large debt to Bolingbroke, and that Bolingbroke confesses it was due, is all that can be declared with certainty. That which makes theEssayworthy the reading is the fruit, not of the argument but of the poetry, and for that Pope trusted to his own genius.

His attempt to 'vindicate the ways of God to man' is confused and contradictory, and no modern reader, perplexed with the mystery of existence, is likely to gain aid from Pope. Nominally a Roman Catholic, and in reality a deist, apart from poetry he does not seem to have had strong convictions on any subject, and was content to be swayed by the opinions current in society. In undertaking to write an ethical work like theEssayhis ambitionwas greater than his strength, yet if Pope's philosophy does not 'find' us, to use Coleridge's phrase, it did appeal to a large number of minds in his own day, and had not lost its popularity at a later period. The poem has been frequently translated into French, into Italian, and into German; it was pronounced by Voltaire to be the most useful and sublime didactic poem ever written in any language; it was admired by Kant and quoted in his lectures; and it received high praise from the Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart. The charm of poetical expression is lost or nearly lost in translations, and while the sense may be retained the aroma of the verse is gone. The popularity of theEssayabroad is therefore not easily to be accounted for, unless we accept the theory that the shallow creed on which it is based suited an age less earnest than our own.[22]

Pope has no strong convictions in this poem, but he has many moods. On one page he is a pantheist, on another he says what he probably did not mean, that God inspires men to do evil, and on a third that 'all our knowledge is ourselves to know.' Nowhere in the argument does Pope seem to have a firm standing, and De Quincey is not far wrong in saying that it is 'the realization of anarchy.'

Read the poem for its poetical merits and you will forget its defects. Pope was a superficial teacher, but direct teaching is not the end of poetry.The Essay on Manis not a poem which can be read and re-read with ever-growing delight, but there are passages in it of as fine an order as any that he has composed on more familiar subjects. Pope was, as Sir William Hamilton said, a curious reader, and the ideas versified in the poem may be traced to a variety of sources.Students who wish to follow this track will find all the help they need in Mr. Pattison's instructive notes, and in the comments attached to the poem in Elwin and Courthope's edition. In his Introduction Mr. Pattison observes that 'the subject of theEssay on Manis not, considered in itself, one unfit for poetry. Had Pope had a genius for philosophy there was no reason why he should not have selected a philosophical subject. Didactic poetry is a mistake if not a contradiction in terms. But poetry is not necessarily didactic because its subject is philosophical.'

It is always difficult to define the themes suitable for poetry. Many theories have been formed as to the scope of the art, and poets have been amply instructed by critics as to what they ought to do, and what they should avoid doing. The theories may appear sound, the arguments convincing, until a great poet arises and knocks them on the head. In a sense every poet of the highest order is also a philosopher and a prophet who sees into 'the life of things.' Whether a philosophical subject can be fitly represented in the imaginative light of poetry is a matter for discussion rather than for decision. In the case of Pope, however, it will be evident to all studious readers that he was incapable of the continuous thought needed for the argument of theEssay.

'Anything like sustained reasoning,' says Mr. Leslie Stephen,' was beyond his reach. Pope felt and thought by shocks and electric flashes.... The defect was aggravated or caused by the physical infirmities which put sustained intellectual labour out of the question.'[23]

Crousaz, a Swiss pastor and professor, who appears to have competed with Berkeley for a prize and won it, attacked Pope'sEssayfor its want of orthodoxy, and his work was translated into English. The poet becamealarmed, but had the good fortune to find a champion in Warburton, who for the rest of his life did Pope much service, not always of a reputable kind. We shall have more to say of him later on, and it will suffice to observe here that Warburton, who through Pope's friendship obtained a good wife, a fortune, and a bishopric, was not a man of high character. His sole object was to advance in life, and he succeeded.

TheMoral Essaysas they are called, and theImitations from Horaceare the final and crowning efforts of the poet's genius. They contain his finest workmanship as a satirist, and will be read, I think, with more pleasure than theDunciad, despite Mr. Ruskin's judgment of that poem as 'the most absolutely chiselled and monumental work "exacted" in our country.'[24]It is impossible to concur in this estimate. The imagery of the poem serves only to disgust, and the spiteful attacks made in it on forgotten men want the largeness of purpose that lifts satire above what is of temporary interest, making it a lesson for all time.

Pope's venom, and the personal animosities which give the sharpest sting, and in some instances a zest, to his verse, are also amply displayed in theMoral Essaysand in theImitations, but the scope is wider in these poems, and the subjects allow of more versatile treatment. They should be read with the help of notes, a help generally needed for satirical poetry, but it should be remembered always that editorial judgments are to be received with discretion and not servilely followed. There is perhaps no danger more carefully to be shunned by the student of literature than the habit of resting satisfied with opinions at second-hand. Better a wrong estimate formed after due reading andthought, than a right estimate gleaned from critics, without any thought at all.

According to Warburton, who is as tricky as Pope himself when it suits his purpose to be so, theEssay on Manwas intended to form four books, in which, as part of the general design, theMoral Essayswould have been included, as well as Book IV. of theDunciad, but to have welded theseEssays, which were published separately, into one continuous poem would neither have suited Pope's genius nor the character of the poems; and how the last book of theDunciadcould have been included in such anolla podridait is difficult to conceive. The poet was fond of projects, and this, happily for his readers, remained one. The dates of the fourEssays, which are really Epistles, and appeared in folio pamphlets, run over several years, but were afterwards re-arranged by Pope. That to Lord Burlington,Of the Use of Riches(Epistle IV.), was published in 1731, under the title,Of False Taste; that to Lord Bathurst,Of the Use of Riches(Epistle III), in 1732; the epistle to Lord Cobham (Epistle I.),Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men, bears the date of 1733; and that To a Lady (Epistle II.),Of the Characters of Women, in 1735. Pope wrote other Epistles, some at a much earlier period of his career, which follow theMoral Essaysbut are not connected with them. Of these one is addressed to Addison, two are to Martha Blount, for whom the second of theMoral Essayswas written; one to the painter Jervas, originally printed in 1717; while another, a few lines only in length, was addressed to Craggs when Secretary of State. Space will not allow of examining each of theEssaysminutely, but there are portions of them which call for comment.

The firstMoral Essay,Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men, in which Pope enlarges on his theory of a rulingpassion, affords a significant example of his incapacity for sustaining an argument, since Warburton, to use his own words, entirely changed and reversed the order and disposition of the several parts to make the composition more coherent. That he has succeeded is doubtful, that he should have ventured upon such a task shows where Pope's weakness lay as a philosophical poet. It is the least interesting of theEssays, but is not without lines that none but Pope could have written.The Characters of Women, the subject of the secondEssay, was not one which the satirist could treat with justice. He saw little in the sex save their foibles, and the lines with which it opens show the spirit that animates the poem:

'Nothing so true as what you once let fall;"Most women have no character at all,"Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair.'

The satire contains one of Pope's offensive allusions to Lady Mary, and the celebrated portrait drawn from two notable women, the Duchess of Buckingham and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, from the latter of whom the poet, at one time, despite his unquestionable love of independence, received £1,000. The story, like many another in the career of Pope, is wrapt in mystery.

Pope took great pains with the EpistleOf the Use of Riches. It was altered from the original conception by the advice of Warburton, who cared more for the argument of a poem than for its poetry. The thought and purpose of theEssayare defective, notwithstanding Warburton's effort to clear them, but these defects are of slight moment when compared with the brilliant passages with which the poem is studded. Among them is the famous description of the Duke of Buckingham's death-bed which should be compared with Dryden's equally famous lines on the same nobleman's character.

'In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,On once a flock-heel, but repaired with straw,With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw,The George and Garter dangling from that bedWhere tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,Great Villiers lies—alas! how changed from him,That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove,The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;Or just as gay at council, in a ringOf mimic statesmen and their merry King.No wit to flatter left of all his store!No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.'

There is also a covert attack in this Epistle upon the moneyed interest represented by Walpole, and on the political corruption which he sanctioned and promoted. Yet Pope knew how to praise the great Whig statesman for his social qualities:

'Seen him I have, but in his happier hourOf social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe,Smile without art and win without a bribe.'

Epistle IV. pursues the same subject as the third, and deals mainly with false taste in the expenditure of wealth, and with the necessity of following 'sense, of every art the soul.' In this poem there is the far-famed description of Timon's Villa, and by Timon Pope was accused of representing the Duke of Chandos, whose estate at Canons he is supposed to have held in scorn after having been, as he acknowledges, 'distinguished' by its master. That would not have deterred Pope from producing a brilliant picture,and his equivocations did but serve to increase suspicion. Probably he found it convenient to use some features of what he may have seen at Canons while composing a general sketch with no special application. TheMoral Essays, it may be added, are not especially moral, but they are full of fine things, and form a portion of Pope's verse second only to theImitations from Horace.

TheseImitationsare introduced by the Prologue addressed to Dr. Arbuthnot, a poem of more than common brilliancy, and also more than commonly venomous. Nowhere, perhaps, is there in Pope's works so powerful and bitter an attack as the twenty-five lines in the Prologue devoted to the vivisection of Lord Hervey, which we are forced to admire while feeling their malevolence; nowhere is there a more consummate piece of satire than the twenty-two lines that contain the poet's masterpiece, the character of Atticus; and nowhere, I may add, are there lines more personally interesting. Portions of the poem were written long before the date of publication, and this is Pope's excuse, a rather lame one perhaps, for printing the character of Atticus and the lines on his mother after the death of Addison and of Mrs. Pope.

'When I had a fever one winter in town,' Pope said to his friend Spence, 'that confined me to my room for some days, Lord Bolingbroke came to see me, happened to take up a Horace that lay on the table, and in turning it over dipt on the first satire of the second book. He observed how well that would hit my case if I were to imitate it in English. After he was gone I read it over, translated it in a morning or two, and sent it to press in a week or fortnight after. And this was the occasion of my imitating some other of the satires and epistles afterwards.'

Bolingbroke did his friend a better service in givingthis advice than he had done with regard to theEssay on Man; and the sixImitations, with the Prologue and Epilogue, which are among the latest fruits of Pope's genius as a satirist, are also the ripest.

Warburton, writing of theImitations of Horace, says: 'Whoever expects a paraphrase of Horace or a faithful copy of his genius or his manner of writing in theseImitationswill be much disappointed. Our author uses the Roman poet for little more than his canvas; and if the old design or colouring chance to suit his purpose, it is well; if not, he employs his own without scruple or ceremony.'

This is true. Pope makes use of Horace when it suits his convenience, but never follows him servilely, and quits him altogether when his design carries him another way.

It was inevitable that he should exercise this freedom, since, as Johnson has pointed out, there will always be an irreconcilable dissimilitude between Roman images and English manners. Moreover, the aim of the two poets was different, Pope's main object being to express personal enmities and to give an exalted notion of his own virtue.

In the opening lines of his First Satire Pope follows Horace pretty closely. Both poets complain that some persons think them too severe, and others too complaisant; both take the advice of a lawyer, Horace of C. Trebatius Testa, who gives him the pithiest replies; and Pope of Fortescue. Both complain that they cannot sleep, the prescription of a wife and cowslip wine being given by the English adviser, while Testa advises Horace to swim thrice across the Tiber and moisten his lips with wine. Throughout the rest of the satire Pope takes only casual glances at the Roman original, and if in the Second Satire the English poet follows Horace in the first few verses in recommending frugality, and in the advice to keep the middle state, and neither to lean on this side or on that, the resemblancebetween the poets is seldom striking, and the spirit which animates them is different,—Horace being classical, and therefore open to the apprehension of all educated readers, while Pope is in a sense provincial, and, as I have already said with reference to theDunciad, cannot be fully enjoyed or even understood without some knowledge of the time and of the men whom he lashes in his satire. The Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace, which Pope attempts to imitate, is, as Mr. Courthope observes, 'incapable of imitation. Its humour, no less than its philosophy, belongs entirely to the Pagan World.' In a general sense it is also true that Horace's style, whether of language or of thought, will not bear transplanting. Indeed, whatever is most characteristic and most exquisite in a poet's work is precisely the portion which cannot be clothed in a foreign dress.

'Life,' said Pope, 'when the first heats are over is all down hill,' and with him the downward progress began at a time when most men are still standing on the summit. Never was there a more fiery spirit in so weak a body. He suffered frequently from headaches, which he relieved by inhaling the steam of coffee. Unfortunately he pampered his appetite and paid a heavy penalty for doing so. Every change of weather affected him; and at the time when most people indulge in company, he tells Swift that he hid himself in bed. Although he sneers at Lord Hervey for taking asses' milk he tried that remedy himself, and he frequently needed medical aid. In his early days he was strong enough to ride on horseback, but in later life his weakness was so great that he was in constant need of help. M. Taine, whose criticism of Pope needs to be read with caution, indulges in an exaggerated description of his bodily condition, observing that when arrived at maturity he appeared no longer capable of existing, and styling him'a nervous abortion.' The poet's condition was sad enough as told by Dr. Johnson, without amplifying it as M. Taine has done. 'One side was contracted. His legs were so slender that he enlarged their bulk with three pairs of stockings, which were drawn on and off by the maid; for he was not able to dress or undress himself, and neither went to bed nor rose without help. His weakness made it very difficult for him to be clean.' After this forlorn description of the poet's state it is a little grotesque to read that his dress of ceremony was black, with a tie-wig and a little sword. A distorted body often holds a generous and untainted soul. This was not the case with Pope, and the sympathy he stood in so large a need of himself, was seldom given to others.

In the spring of 1744 it became evident that the end was approaching. Three weeks before his death he distributed theMoral Epistlesamong his friends, saying: 'Here I am, like Socrates, dispensing my morality amongst my friends just as I am dying.' He died peacefully on May 30th, 1744, and was buried in Twickenham Church near the monument erected to his parents.

Pope's standing among his country's poets has been the source of much controversy. There have been critics who deny to him the name of a poet, while others place him in the first rank. In his own century there was comparatively little difference of opinion with regard to his merits. Chesterfield gave him the warmest praise; Swift, Addison, and Warburton ranked him with the peers of song; Johnson, whose discriminative criticism reaches perhaps its highest level in hisLife of Pope, in reply to the question which had been asked, even in his day, whether Pope was a poet? asks in return, 'If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found?' and adds that 'to circumscribe poetry by a definition will only show the narrowness of the definer, though a definition which shall exclude Pope will not readily bemade.' Joseph Warton, too, Johnson's contemporary and friend, while preferring the Romantic School to the Classical, allows that in that species of poetry wherein Pope excelled he is superior to all mankind.

In our century Bowles, whose edition of his works provoked prolonged discussion, in which Campbell, Byron, and theQuarterly Reviewtook part, places Pope above Dryden. Byron, with more enthusiasm than judgment, regarded him as the greatest name in our poetry; Scott, with generous appreciation of a genius so alien to his own, called him a 'true Deacon of the craft,' and at one time proposed editing his works, a task projected also by Mr. Ruskin, who, putting Shakespeare aside as rather the world's than ours, holds Pope 'to be the most perfect representative we have since Chaucer of the true English mind.' 'Matched on his own ground,' says Mr. Swinburne, 'he never has been nor can be.' And Mr. Lowell in the same strain observes that 'in his own province he still stands unapproachably alone.'

What then is Pope's ground? What is this province of which he is the sole ruler? To a considerable extent the question has been answered in these pages, but it may be well to sum up with more definiteness what has been already stated.

In poetry Pope takes a first place in the second order of poets. The deficiencies which forbid his entrance into the first rank are obvious. He cannot sing, he has no ear for the subtlest melodies of verse, he is not a creative poet, and has few of the spirit-stirring thoughts which the noblest poets scatter through their pages with apparent unconsciousness. There are no depths in Pope and there are no heights; he has neither eye for the beauties of Nature, nor ear for her harmonies, and a primrose was no more to him than it was to Peter Bell.

These are defects indeed, but nothing is more unfair says a great French critic than to judge notable minds solely by their defects, and in spite of them Pope's position is so unassailable that the critic must take a contracted view of the poet's art who questions his right to the title.

His merits are of a kind not likely to be affected by time; a lively fancy, a power of satire almost unrivalled, and a skill in using words so consummate that there is no poet, excepting Shakespeare, who has left his mark upon the language so strongly. The loss to us if Pope's verse were to become extinct cannot readily be measured. He has said in the best words what we all know and feel, but cannot express, and has made that classical which in weaker hands would be commonplace. His sensibility to the claims of his art is exquisite, the adaptation of his style to his subject shows the hand of a master, and if these are not the highest gifts of a poet, they are gifts to which none but a poet can lay claim.

FOOTNOTES:[11]Some qualification may be made to these statements. Pope took pleasure in landscape gardening on the English plan, as opposed to the formality of the French and Dutch systems, and the design of the Prince of Wales's garden is said to have been copied from the poet's at Twickenham.[12]Elwin and Courthope'sPope, vol. ii. p. 160.[13]See the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.[14]Elwin and Courthope'sPope, vol. v., p. 195.[15]'Lady Mary,' says Byron, 'was greatly to blame in that quarrel for having encouraged Pope.... She should have remembered her own line,'"He comes too near who comes to be denied."'[16]Studies in English Literature, p. 47.—Stanford.[17]Quin (1693-1766) was the famous actor, and Patterson was Thomson's deputy in the surveyor-generalship of the Leeward Isles, and ultimately his successor.[18]The Earl of Peterborough, the meteor-like brilliancy of whose actions forms one of the most striking chapters in the history of his time.[19]Life of Pope, p. 216.[20]'Pope and Swift,' says Dr. Johnson, 'had an unnatural delight in ideas physically impure, such as every other tongue utters with unwillingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the mention.'[21]Clarendon Press, Oxford.[22]No doubt many distinguished foreigners who appreciated the beauty of the poem had read it in the original.[23]Stephen'sPope, p. 163.[24]Lectures on Art, p. 70, Oxford.

[11]Some qualification may be made to these statements. Pope took pleasure in landscape gardening on the English plan, as opposed to the formality of the French and Dutch systems, and the design of the Prince of Wales's garden is said to have been copied from the poet's at Twickenham.

[12]Elwin and Courthope'sPope, vol. ii. p. 160.

[13]See the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.

[14]Elwin and Courthope'sPope, vol. v., p. 195.

[15]'Lady Mary,' says Byron, 'was greatly to blame in that quarrel for having encouraged Pope.... She should have remembered her own line,'"He comes too near who comes to be denied."'

[15]'Lady Mary,' says Byron, 'was greatly to blame in that quarrel for having encouraged Pope.... She should have remembered her own line,

'"He comes too near who comes to be denied."'

[16]Studies in English Literature, p. 47.—Stanford.

[17]Quin (1693-1766) was the famous actor, and Patterson was Thomson's deputy in the surveyor-generalship of the Leeward Isles, and ultimately his successor.

[18]The Earl of Peterborough, the meteor-like brilliancy of whose actions forms one of the most striking chapters in the history of his time.

[19]Life of Pope, p. 216.

[20]'Pope and Swift,' says Dr. Johnson, 'had an unnatural delight in ideas physically impure, such as every other tongue utters with unwillingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the mention.'

[21]Clarendon Press, Oxford.

[22]No doubt many distinguished foreigners who appreciated the beauty of the poem had read it in the original.

[23]Stephen'sPope, p. 163.

[24]Lectures on Art, p. 70, Oxford.

Matthew Prior (1664-1721).

The ease with which the Queen Anne wits obtained office and rose to posts of high trust through the pleasant art of verse-making, is conspicuous in the career of Prior. His parents are unknown, the place of his birth is somewhat doubtful, although he is claimed by Wimborne-Minster, in Dorsetshire, and the first trustworthy facts recorded of his early career are that he was a Westminster scholar when the famous Dr. Busby, whose discipline was physical as well as mental, presided over the school. His father died, and his mother being no longer able to pay the school fees, Prior was placed with an uncle who kept the Rhenish Wine Tavern in Westminster. His seat was in the bar, and there the Earl of Dorset (1637-1705-6), a small poet, but a generous patron of poets, found the youth reading Horace, and, pleased with his 'parts,' sent him back to Westminster, whence he went up to Cambridge as a scholar at St. John's, the college destined a century later to receive one of the greatest of English poets.

Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax (1661-1715), the son of a younger son of a nobleman, was also a Westminster scholar. He entered Trinity College in 1679, and like Prior appears to have owed his good fortune to the rhymer's craft. 'At thirty,' writes LordMacaulay, 'he would gladly have given all his chances in life for a comfortable vicarage and a chaplain's scarf. At thirty-seven he was First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a Regent of the Kingdom.' The literary history of the Queen Anne age has many associations with his name. He proved a liberal patron of the wits, and of Pope among them, by subscribing largely to hisHomer; but the poet's memory was stronger for imaginary injuries than for real benefits, and because Halifax had patronized Tickell, he figures in the Prologue to the Satires as 'full-blown Bufo, puffed by every quill.'

Prior and Montague began their rhyming career early, and a partnership production, entitled theHind and Panther, transversed to the story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse(1687), a parody of Dryden's famous poem published in the same year, brought both authors into notice. At the age of twenty-six Prior, who had previously obtained a fellowship, was appointed Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague. After that he rose steadily to eminence, became Secretary of State in Ireland, and was finally appointed Ambassador at the French Court. High office brings its troubles, and in those days was not without its perils. In 1711 Prior was sent secretly to Paris to negotiate a peace, for which, when the Whigs came again into power, he was imprisoned and expected to lose his head. While in prison, where he remained for two years (1715-1717), the poet wroteAlma, a humorous and speculative poem on the relations of the soul and body, and when released published hisPoemsby subscription in a noble folio, said to be the largest-sized volume in the whole range of English poetry. He gained 4,000 guineas by the publication, and with that sum and an estate purchased for him by Lord Harley, Prior was able to live in comfort. He died in September, 1721, in his fifty-eighth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey,under a monument for which he had had the vanity to pay five hundred pounds.

The peculiar merit of Prior is better understood in our day than it was in his own. We read his poems solely for the sake of the 'lighter pieces,' which Johnson despised. The poet thoughtSolomonhis best work, but no one who toils through the three books which form that poem is likely to agree with this estimate. Dulness pervades the work like an atmosphere, but it had its admirers in the last century, and among them was John Wesley, who, in reply to Johnson's complaint of its tediousness, said he should as soon think of calling the Second or Sixth Æneid tedious. In the preface to the poem Prior declares that he "had rather be thought a good Englishman than the best poet or greatest scholar that ever wrote," a passage which does more honour to the poet than any in the text. A far more popular piece wasHenry and Emma, which even so fine a judge of poetry as Cowper called 'inimitable.' Tastes change, let us hope for the better, and possibly none but the greatest poets remain unaffected by time. Assuredly Prior does not, andHenry and Emmaaffords a striking illustration of the contrast between the poetical spirit of Prior's age and that which influences ours. The poem is founded on the fine ballad of theNut-Browne Maide. The story, as originally told, is homely and quaint, written without apparent effort and told in 360 lines. Prior requires considerably more than twice that number, and his maid and her lover, instead of using the simple language befitting the theme, employ the conventional machinery of the age, and bring Jove and Mars, Cupid and Venus upon the scene, with allusions to Marlborough's victories and to 'Anna's wondrous reign.'

Alma, a poem written in Hudibrastic verse, which shows that Prior had in a measure caught the vein of Butler, hassome couplets familiar in quotations. He won, too, not a little contemporary reputation for his tales in verse, which are singularly coarse; but an age that tolerated Mrs. Manley and read the plays and novels of Aphra Behn was not likely to object to the grossness of Prior. Dr. Johnson would not admit that his poems were unfit for a lady's table, and Wesley, who appears to have been strangely oblivious to Prior's moral delinquencies, observes that his tales are the best told of any in the English tongue. Cowper praised him for his 'charming ease,' and this gift enabled him to write some of the most delightful occasional verses produced in the century. There is nothing more exquisite of its kind than his address,To a Child of Quality, written when the child was five years old and the poet forty, and one is not surprised to learn that Prior was admired by Thomas Moore, who more than once caught his note. A reader familiar with Moore and ignorant of Prior would without hesitation attribute the following stanzas, from theAnswer to Chloe Jealous, to the Irish poet:

'The god of us versemen (you know, Child), the sun,How after his journeys he sets up his rest;If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run,At night he declines on his Thetis's breast.'So when I am wearied with wandering all day,To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;No matter what beauties I saw in my way;They were but my visits, but thou art my home.'Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war,And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree;For thou art a girl as much brighter than herAs he was a poet sublimer than me.'

'The god of us versemen (you know, Child), the sun,How after his journeys he sets up his rest;If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run,At night he declines on his Thetis's breast.

'So when I am wearied with wandering all day,To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;No matter what beauties I saw in my way;They were but my visits, but thou art my home.

'Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war,And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree;For thou art a girl as much brighter than herAs he was a poet sublimer than me.'

"The grammatical lapse in these last two lines," says Mr. Austin Dobson, "perhaps calls for correction, but many readers will probably agree with Moore (Diary, November,1818), 'that it is far prettier as it is.' 'Nothing,' he says truly, 'can be more gracefully light and gallant than this little poem.'"

It was fancy and not imagination which conceived the following lines, but how charming is the fancy! The poem, which is given in a slightly abridged form, is addressed

'To a Lady: she refusing to continue a dispute with me, and leaving me in the argument.

'In the dispute whate'er I said,My heart was by my tongue belied;And in my looks you might have readHow much I argued on your side.'You, far from danger as from fear,Might have sustained an open fight;For seldom your opinions err;Your eyes are always in the right.'Alas! not hoping to subdue,I only to the fight aspired;To keep the beauteous foe in viewWas all the glory I desired.'But she, howe'er of victory sure,Contemns the wreath too long delayed;And, armed with more immediate power,Calls cruel silence to her aid.'Deeper to wound, she shuns the fight:She drops her arms, to gain the field;Secures her conquest by her flight;And triumphs, when she seems to yield.'So when the Parthian turned his steed,And from the hostile camp withdrew;With cruel skill the backward reedHe sent; and as he fled, he slew.'

'In the dispute whate'er I said,My heart was by my tongue belied;And in my looks you might have readHow much I argued on your side.

'You, far from danger as from fear,Might have sustained an open fight;For seldom your opinions err;Your eyes are always in the right.

'Alas! not hoping to subdue,I only to the fight aspired;To keep the beauteous foe in viewWas all the glory I desired.

'But she, howe'er of victory sure,Contemns the wreath too long delayed;And, armed with more immediate power,Calls cruel silence to her aid.

'Deeper to wound, she shuns the fight:She drops her arms, to gain the field;Secures her conquest by her flight;And triumphs, when she seems to yield.

'So when the Parthian turned his steed,And from the hostile camp withdrew;With cruel skill the backward reedHe sent; and as he fled, he slew.'

Wit and a ready command of verse are the characteristics of Prior's poetry. Both of these gifts are to be seen in hislivelyEnglish ballad on the Taking of Namur by the King of Great Britain, in which he travesties Boileau'sOde sur la prise de Namur. As an epigrammatist he reaped his advantage from a study of Martial, and in this department of verse Prior is often successful. If brevity be a prominent merit in an epigram, he sometimes excels his master, as, for example, in this stanza:

'To John I owed great obligation;But John unhappily thought fitTo publish it to all the nation;Sure John and I are more than quit.'[25]

This is half the length of the original Latin, and what it loses in elegance it gains in point.

It may be hoped that the next quotation is a libel on Bishop Atterbury; if so, the lines have every merit but truth. The epigram is on the funeral of the Duke of Buckingham, who died in 1721.

'I have no hopes,' the duke he says, and dies;'In sure and certain hopes,' the prelate cries:Of these two learned peers, I prithee say, man,Who is the lying knave, the priest or layman?The duke he stands an infidel confest;'He's our dear brother,' quoth the lordly priest.The duke, though knave, still 'brother dear,' he cries;And who can say the reverend prelate lies?

Prior, it may be observed here, could say pointed things in prose as well as in verse, and nothing can be happier than his reply to the Frenchman's inquiry whether the King of England had anything to show in his palace equal to the paintings at Versailles illustrating the victories of Louis XIV: 'The monuments of my master's actions,' said the poet, 'are to be seen everywhere except in his own house.'

It is always interesting to link poet with poet, and inrelation to Prior many readers will recall the pathetic incident related of Sir Walter Scott when the wonderful intellect which had entranced the world was giving indications of decay. Lockhart relates how, as they were travelling together, a quotation from Prior led Scott to make another, slightly altered for the occasion, and he adds:

'This seemed to put him into the train of Prior, and he repeated several striking passages both of theAlmaand theSolomon. He was still at this when we reached a longish hill, and he got out to walk a little. As we climbed the ascent, he leaning heavily on my shoulder, we were met by a couple of beggars, who were, or professed to be, old soldiers both of Egypt and the Peninsula. One of them wanted a leg, which circumstance alone would have opened Scott's purse-strings, though,ex facie, a sad old blackguard; but the fellow had recognized his person as it happened, and in asking an alms bade God bless him fervently by his name. The mendicants went on their way, and we stood breathing on the knoll. Sir Walter followed them with his eye, and planting his stick firmly on the sod, repeated, without break or hesitation Prior's verses to the historian Mezeray. That he applied them to himself was touchingly obvious, and therefore I must quote them.

'"Whate'er thy countrymen have done,By law and wit, by sword and gun,In thee is faithfully recited;And all the living world that viewThy work, give thee the praises due,At once instructed and delighted.'"Yet for the fame of all these deeds,What beggar in theInvalides,With lameness broke, with blindness smitten,Wished ever decently to die,To have been either Mezeray,Or any monarch he has written?'"It strange, dear author, yet it true is,That down from Pharamond to LouisAll covet life, yet call it pain:All feel the ill, yet shun the cure;Can sense this paradox endure?Resolve me Cambray[26]or Fontaine.'"The man in graver tragic known(Though his best part long since was done),Still on the stage desires to tarry;And he who played the Harlequin,After the jest still loads the scene,Unwilling to retire, though weary."'

'"Yet for the fame of all these deeds,What beggar in theInvalides,With lameness broke, with blindness smitten,Wished ever decently to die,To have been either Mezeray,Or any monarch he has written?

'"It strange, dear author, yet it true is,That down from Pharamond to LouisAll covet life, yet call it pain:All feel the ill, yet shun the cure;Can sense this paradox endure?Resolve me Cambray[26]or Fontaine.

'"The man in graver tragic known(Though his best part long since was done),Still on the stage desires to tarry;And he who played the Harlequin,After the jest still loads the scene,Unwilling to retire, though weary."'

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