artificial life and manners, of the frailties and foibles of society, of virtue and vice as exhibited in a highly-civilised and somewhat petit-maître community. In his ethics he is a professor with a theory, and in expounding it he is not always consistent. In his satire he is ruthless and of seeming implacability. He brings to his work, whatever it may be, a weapon of the finest point, a wrist firm and supple, an eye that notes with an instinct like inspiration every flaw in an adversary's mail, and the wound is given, and bleeds immortally.

But Pope occupies a very high niche in the temple of English poesy. As a conductor of an argument in rhyme, he has no equal, and no second. In his own peculiar walk he is unrivalled. Within that circle none dares tread but he. Grave objections were urged against his claims as a poet of a high rank, chiefly on the score of his untruthfulness to nature—that is, by an arbitrary limitation of the term to external nature-when he attempts description. Wordsworth said that a blind man who had merely noted attentively the ordinary conversation of his neighbours could easily convict him of inaccuracy in this respect. But this is gross exaggeration. In his "Windsor Forest," and in the "Temple of Fame," as well as in many passages of his other works, original and translated, we have descriptive poetry as truthful as it is beautiful. But is nothing within the category of nature but mountain, lake, and sea, atmospheric phenomena, Lucy Grays, Alice Fells, and "the dear waggoners around the lakes?" In every highly-civilised community, as history shews us, there arrives naturally a period, after the earnest heroic souls who have established the national greatness, and determined the national character, have gone to their rest, when life becomes less real, when manners usurp the place of morals, when rakes and dandies inherit the names, and sit in the halls of patriots of austere virtue and historic renown. Then, by an inevitable law, the satirist comes on the stage, and performs a duty, a necessary,

though an invidious one, which, despite the noble rage of Cowper, could not be so well performed by the pulpit. In Wordsworth's exquisite "We are Seven," the character of "the little maiden" is felt to be nature in one of its simplest and most touching manifestations; but though Pope generally exhibited character as operating through manners, less interesting, less natural, in a limited sense of the term, still his pictures are true and masterly, and represent no mere figment of his brain, but what came daily under his observation. We may censure his choice of a subject, but we are compelled to admire his delineation of it. And what must not be overlooked in an estimate of Pope's poetic standing, he is the last of our poets, with the exception of Byron, who is thoroughly English; and it may be long before we have another bard possessing the same vigour and terseness, and perfect mastery of our noble and expressive language. We can easily imagine that Pope will be read with delight, when many of our sweet singers, prating continually of nature, and twitting the admirers of Pope with his artificialness, will have been entirely forgotten, or banished to the corners and upper shelves of our libraries, to be worm-eaten in company with Hammond, and Broome, and Fenton, and Tickell, and Savage, and Philips.

In judging of his poetry we must keep out of view our own predilections and the favourite forms and subjects of the Muse of our own day, and ascertain as nearly as possible the standard of taste and excellence which obtained in his time, and to which he must always have had reference in preparing his works for the public eye. We must also consider how far he has succeeded in realising his own ideal, and not whether that was the noblest or highest ideal, or one likely to find acceptance with a great original poet of our times. In the early decades of the eighteenth century, satire was the most effective weapon in the poet's armoury, and Pope wielded it like one "to the manner born." As a satirist, he had special qualifications. Nature had been

unkind enough to make sardonic observation and criticism of his kind not quite unbecoming for him. He had studied Horace with great love and appreciation, as is evidenced by his matchless imitations of the Venusian bard—a satirist mild and genial, however, who tickled where Pope smote. A healthy man of good digestion, the favourite of Augustus and his minister, with fortune full in his sails, whereas Pope was deformed, dyspeptic, under Catholic disabilities, and a close friend of disappointed deans, of banished bishops, and discarded statesmen. And it can hardly be doubted that his sense of physical weakness was soothed by his power to impale on the barbed shafts of his satire, and hold up for everlasting derision whomsoever he would. In Swift he found a congenial spirit, who urged him now and again to give the world “one lash more." But he overdid his task, and even Swift, in the view of Pope's fame, fortunes, happy home, and "troops of friends," was forced to rebuke him for his spurious misanthropy. In Swift's bitterness there was no affectation. He confesses that he hates the world. He may love John, Peter, Thomas, but he most cordially detests that animal called man. As early as 1722, Atterbury had encouraged Pope to cultivate satire as a walk in which he was fitted to excel. The advice, judicious as it was, was gratuitous, for Pope knew well where his strength lay, and how to use it to the best advantage. The noble Arbuthnot, the most reputable of all his friends, in a beautiful letter written shortly before his death, with great judgment and gentleness gives him this caution:-"And I make it my last request, that you will continue that noble disdain and abhorrence of vice which you seem naturally endued with, but still with a due regard to your own safety; and study more to reform than to chastise, though the one cannot be effected without the other."

There is no vital link between Pope's works and Christianity. We look upon him and his friends as we would upon a conclave of noble heathens, with all the virtues, and

graces, and charities of life, but just as these might have existed in Socrates, Alcibiades, Virgil, or Seneca. A better Christian than any of them might have been picked out from the heathen world-one with more self-denial, more active virtue, a larger-hearted humanity, and more Christlike sympathies. We assert this simply as it has occurred to us in forming an estimate of Pope and his environment, without any reference to sect or creed. There was a nobility of character about him which transcends the comprehension of many who deem themselves, and are deemed, exemplary Christians. For had he consented to profess the Protestant form of Christianity, there would have been an obstacle,not an insuperable one to his enjoyment of a pension,--but an obstacle removed from the path of preferment, and place and power would have easily been within his reach. But he would not have turned his coat for a coronet. And be it remembered that he had no conviction of the superiority of Catholicism as an expression of doctrine and worship. His faith in it was weak and inoperative as a rule of life, and in his own mind the Church of Rome was not a hair's-breadth above the Church of England. But he was courageous and honest, and valued a consistent manly life more than wealth and honours.

Any one acquainted with the literature of Greece and Rome will understand at once what is meant by this pagan spirit we find in Pope. After lengthened intercourse with the ancient classics, everybody but a grammarian is fain to turn aside and refresh himself at the sacred fountains of Christian lore. For there is a deadness and coldness about them, a want of something to satisfy the heart, of something to rest in as in an ark. And so it is in reading Pope. In his poetic heaven there is a sun, bright, searching, dazzling, but cold. Everything is revealed by it, clear and hard. No kindly haze floats between to make the beautiful more beauteous, and to robe the coarse and homely in its manycoloured mantle. And this is because there is no heat.

How much more comfortable we feel under such a lesser luminary as James Montgomery! His sun is not so bright, does not glare with so fierce a ray, does not so light up every felon like a detective's lantern. But there is heat in it. We live and grow under it. Our hearts bless it; and we feel that it is indeed a pleasant thing to behold the light of the sun. We glow. with gratitude to the Great Father, with love to the Great Family, and we find rest and peace ourselves.

Pope resembled the great heathen moralists in nothing more than in the high-in fact, prime-place which he assigns to friendship in his category of virtues. A favourite argument in the early ages, and one which has been repeated frequently since, against the divine origin of Christianity, was that it did not expressly inculcate the duty and obligation of friendship. With regard to this virtue, the cultivated heathen intellect was possessed by a morbid sentimentalism, affected or really participated in by Pope and others in recent times, whose culture, like his, was essentially pagan. Piety also, as indicating affection for one's kindred, and, of course, closely allied to friendship, ranked very high among heathen virtues, especially as we see in their delineations of the heroic age; and piety in this sense was another strong feature of Pope's moral nature. The affection he bestowed was warmly reciprocated. His half-sister, Mrs Racket, evidently thought there never was such another wonderful man as her brother. And his love for his mother -who can forget that touching story? He had at one time an intense desire to travel, but he would not leave the poor old woman who lived only in his love. On no consideration would he remove himself for any length of time out of immediate reach of her. He might have gone with Berkeley to Italy, he might have visited Bolingbroke in France, he might have accepted Swift's frequent and urgent invitation to visit Ireland. But, though not unwilling to go, he framed excuses-chiefly the dread of sea-sickness. This may ulti