the grossness of its images. Pope and Swift had atural delight in ideas physically impure, such as other tongue utters with unwillingness, and of every ear shrinks from the mention.

even this fault, offensive as it is, may be forgiven excellence of other passages; such as the forma d dissolution of Moore, the account of the traveller, fortune of the florist, and the crowded thoughts tely numbers which dignify the concluding para

alterations which have been made in the Dunciad,
ays for the better, require that it should be pub-
is in the present collection, with all its variations.
Essay on Man was a work of great labour and long
ation, but certainly not the happiest of Pope's
ances. The subject is, perhaps, not very proper
ry, and the poet was not sufficiently master of his
; metaphysical morality was to him a new study;
proud of his acquisitions, and, supposing himself
f great secrets, was in haste to teach what he had
ned. Thus he tells us, in the first epistle, that
nature of the supreme being may be deduced an
beings such as mankind, because infinite excel-
n do only what is best. He finds out that these
ust be "somewhere;" and that "all the question
er man be in a wrong place." Surely if, accord-
e poet's Leibnitzian reasoning, we may infer that
ht to be, only because he is, we may allow that
is the right place, because he has it. Supreme
's not less infallible in disposing than in creating.
it is meant by ، somewhere” and “ place,” and
place," it had been vain to ask Pope, who, pro-
d never asked himself.

gexalted himself into the chair of wisdom, he
much that every man knows, and much that he
know himself; that we see but little, and that the
the universe is beyond our comprehension; an
very
uncommon and that there is a chain of

not

z 2

times failed; the ship-race, compared with the chariotrace, is neither illustrated nor aggrandized; land and water make all the difference: when Apollo, running after Daphne, is likened to a greyhound chasing a hare, there is nothing gained; the ideas of pursuit and flight are too plain to be made plainer, and a god and the daughter of a god are not represented much to their advantage by a hare and dog. The simile of the Alps has no useless parts, yet affords a striking picture by itself; it makes the foregoing position better understood, and enables it to take faster hold on the attention; it assists the apprehension, and elevates the fancy.

Let me, likewise, dwell a little on the celebrated paragraph, in which it is directed that "the sound should seem an echo to the sense;" a precept which Pope is allowed to have observed beyond any other English poet.

This notion of representative metre, and the desire of discovering frequent adaptations of the sound to the sense, have produced, in my opinion, many wild conceits and imaginary beauties. All that can furnish this representation are the sounds of the words considered singly, and the time in which they are pronounced. Every language has some words framed to exhibit the noises which they express, as thump, rattle, growl, hiss. These, however, are but few, and the poet cannot make them more, nor can they be of any use but when sound is to be mentioned. The time of pronunciation was, in the dactylick measures of the learned languages, capable of considerable variety; but that variety could be accommodated only to motion or duration, and different degrees of motion were, perhaps, expressed by verses rapid or slow, without much attention of the writer, when the image had full possession of his fancy; but our language having little flexibility, our verses can differ very little in their cadence. The fancied resemblances, I fear, arise sometimes merely from the ambiguity of words; there is supposed to be some relation between a soft line and a soft couch, or between hard

syllables and hard fortune.

Motion, however, may be in some sort exemplified; and

yet it may be suspected that even in such resemblances the mind often governs the ear, and the sounds are estimated by their meaning. One of the most successful attempts has been to describe the labour of Sisyphus :

With many a weary step, and many a groan,
Up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone;

The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,
Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.

Who does not perceive the stone to move slowly upward, and roll violently back? But set the same numbers to another sense :

While many a merry tale, and many a song,

Cheer'd the rough road, we wish'd the rough road long.
The rough road then, returning in a round,
Mock'd our impatient steps, for all was fairy ground.

We have now, surely, lost much of the delay, and much of the rapidity.

But, to show how little the greatest master of numbers can fix the principles of representative harmony, it will be sufficient to remark that the poet, who tells us, that

When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow:

Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,

Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main;

when he had enjoyed, for about thirty years, the praise of Camilla's lightness of foot, tried another experiment upon sound and time, and produced this memorable triplet :

Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full resounding line,
The long majestick march, and energy divine.

Here are the swiftness of the rapid race, and the march of slow-paced majesty, exhibited by the same poet in the same sequence of syllables, except that the exact prosodist will find the line of swiftness by one time longer than that of tardiness.

Beauties of this kind are commonly fancied; and, when real, are technical and nugatory, not to be rejected, and not to be solicited.

To the praises which have been accumulated on the Rape of the Lock by readers of every class, from the critick to the waiting-maid, it is difficult to make any addition. Of that which is universally allowed to be the most attractive of all ludicrous compositions, let it rather be now inquired from what sources the power of pleasing is derived.

Dr. Warburton, who excelled in critical perspicacity, has remarked that the preternatural agents are very happily adapted to the purposes of the poem. The heathen deities can no longer gain attention: we should have turned away from a contest between Venus and Diana.

ployment of allegorical persons always excites conviction of its own absurdity; they may produce effects, but cannot conduct actions; when the phantom is put in motion, it dissolves; thus Discord may raise a mutiny, but Discord cannot conduct a march, or besiege a town. Pope brought into view a new race of beings, with powers and passions proportionate to their operation. The sylphs and gnomes act, at the toilet and the tea-table, what more terrifick and more powerful phantoms perform on the stormy ocean, or the field of battle; they give their proper help, and do their proper mischief.

Pope is said, by an objector, not to have been the inventer of this petty nation; a charge which might, with more justice, have been brought against the author of the Iliad, who, doubtless, adopted the religious system of his country; for what is there, but the names of his agents, which Pope has not invented? Has he not assigned them characters and operations never heard of before? Has he not, at least, given them their first poetical existence? If this is not sufficient to denominate his work original, nothing original ever can be written.

In this work are exhibited, in a very high degree, the two most engaging powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new. A race