Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,

Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;'

Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage,

Destructive war, and all-involving age.

See, from each clime, the learn'd their incense bring;

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Hear, in all tongues consenting Pæans ring!

In praise so just let ev'ry voice be joined,
And fill the gen'ral chorus of mankind.'
Hail, bards triumphant! born in happier days;'
Immortal heirs of universal praise!

Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow;

corum legentibus placere, quam multa
displicere maluerim. Quint.-Pope.

Lord Roscommon was not disposed to be so diffident in those excellent verses of his Essay :

For who, without a qualm, hath ever
looked
[cooked?

On holy garbage, though by Homer
Whose railing heroes, and whose wounded
gods,

Make some suspect he snores as well as nods.-WAKEFIELD.

Pope originally wrote in his manuscript.

Nor Homer nods so often as we dream, which was followed by this couplet : In sacred writ where difficulties rise, 'Tis safer far to fear than criticise.

1 So Roscommon's epilogue to Alexander the Great :

Secured by higher pow'rs exalted stands
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands.-
WAKEFIELD.

* The poet here alludes to the four great causes of the ravage amongst ancient writings. The destruction of the Alexandrine and Palatine libraries by fire; the fiercer rage of Zoilus, Mævius, and their followers, against wit; the irruption of the barbarians into the empire; and the long reign of ignorance and superstition in the cloisters.-WArburton.

I like the original verse better

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Destructive war, and all-devouring age,— as a metaphor much more perspicuous and specific.—WAKEFIELD.

In his epistle to Addison, Pope has "all-devouring age," but the epithet here is more original and striking, and admirably suited to the subject. This shows a nice discrimination. "All-involving" would be as improper in the Essay on Medals as "all-devouring" would be in this place.BOWLES.

A couplet in Cooper's Hill suggested the couplet of Pope:

Now shalt thou stand, though sword, or
time, or fire,
[spire.
Or zeal more fierce than they, thy fall con-
3 Thus in a poem on the Fear of
Death, ascribed to the Duke of
Wharton:

There rival chiefs combine
To fill the gen'ral chorus of her reign.-
WAKEFIELD.

4 Cowley on the death of Crashaw:
Hail, bard triumphant.
Virg. Æn. vi. 649:
Magnanimi heroes! nati melioribus annis.
-WAKEFIELD.

Dryden's Religio Laici:

Those giant wits in happier ages born.

From Pope's manuscript it appears that he had originally written :

Hail, happy heroes, born in better days.

Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud, that must not yet be found!'
O may some spark of your celestial fire,
The last, the meanest of your sons inspire,

(That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights;
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes,)

To teach vain wits a science little known,
T'admire superior sense, and doubt their own!

II.

Of all the causes which conspire to blind Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

Whatever nature has in worth denied,'

She gives in large recruits of needful pride;

For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find

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What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind:'
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,

And fills up all the mighty void of sense.
If once right reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.

In a note he gave the line from Virgil of which his own was a translation.

An imitation of Cowley, David. ii. 833:

Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound

And reach to worlds that must not yet be found.-WAKEFIELD.

Oldham's Elegies:

What nature has in bulk to me denied.

"Everybody allows," says Malebranche, "that the animal spirits are the most subtle and agitated parts of the blood. These spirits are carried with the rest of the blood to the brain,

210

and are there separated by some organ destined to the purpose." Pope adopted the doctrine "allowed by everybody," but which consisted of assumptions without proof. The very existence of these fluid spirits had never been ascertained. The remaining physiology of Pope's couplet was erroneous. When there is a deficiency of blood, its place is not supplied by wind. The grammatical construction, again, is vicious, and ascribes "blood and spirits" to souls as well as to bodies. The moral reflection illustrated by the simile is but little more correct. Men in general are not proud in proportion as they have nothing to be proud of.

Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,
Make use of ev'ry friend and ev'ry foe.

A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:'
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts,2
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,'
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;'
But more advanced, behold with strange surprise,
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps we try,'
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
But those attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthened way,
Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!"

1 Pope is commonly considered to have laid down the general proposition that total ignorance was preferable to imperfect knowledge. The context shows that he was speaking only of conceited critics, who were presumptuous because they were ill-informed. He tells such persons that the more enlightened they become the humbler they will grow.

2 In the early editions,

Fired with the charms fair science does impart.

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4 The proper word would have been "beyond."

5 [Much we begin to doubt and much to fear
Our sight less trusting as we see more
clear.]

So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps to try,
Filled with ideas of fair Italy,

The traveller beholds with cheerful eyes
The less'ning vales, and seems to tread
the skies.-POPE.

The couplet between brackets is from the manuscript. The next couplet, with a variation in the first line, was transferred to the epistle to Jervas.

This is, perhaps, the best simile in our language-that in which the most exact resemblance is traced between things in appearance utterly unrelated to each other.

SON.

-

JOHN

I will own I am not of this opinion. The simile appears evidently to have

A perfect judge will read each work of wit'
With the same spirit that its author writ:2
Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find

Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind;
Nor lose for that malignant dull delight,

The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit.
But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,'
Correctly cold, and regularly low,

That, shunning faults, one quiet tenour keep,
We cannot blame indeed, but we may sleep.
In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts
Is not th' exactness of peculiar parts;
'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,

But the joint force and full result of all."

Thus when we view some well-proportioned dome,

(The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O Rome!") No single parts unequally surprise,

All comes united to th' admiring eyes;

23!

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been suggested by the following one in the works of Drummond:

All as a pilgrim who the Alps doth pass,
Or Atlas' temples crowned with winter's
glass,

The airy Caucasus, the Apennine,

Pyrene's cliffs where sun doth never shine,
When he some heaps of hills hath overwent,
Begins to think on rest, his journey spent,
Till mounting some tall mountain he doth
find

More heights before him than he left be-
hind.-WARTON.

The simile is undoubtedly appropriate, illustrative, and eminently beautiful, but evidently copied.BOWLES.

Diligenter legendum est ac pæne ad scribendi solicitudinem: nec per partes modo scrutanda sunt omnia, sed perlectus liber utique ex integro resumendus. Quint.-POPE.

2 The Bible never descends to the mean colloquial preterites of "chid"

for "did chide," or "writ" for "did write," but always uses the full-dress word "chode" and "wrote." Pope might have been happier had he read his Bible more, but assuredly he would have improved his English.— DE QUINCEY.

3 Boileau's Art of Poetry by Dry. den and Soame, canto i.:

A frozen style, that neither ebbs or flows,
Instead of pleasing makes us gape and doze.

4 Much in the same strain Garth's Dispensary, iv. 24:

So nicely tasteless, so correctly dull.WAKEFIELD.

5 This is an adaptation of a couplet in Dryden's Eleonora :

Nor this part musk, or civet can we call,
Or amber, but a rich result of all.

It is impossible to determine whether he refers to St. Peter's or the Pantheon.

No monstrous height, or breadth, or length, appear;'
The whole at once is bold, and regular.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,

Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.'
In ev'ry work regard the writer's end,
Since none can compass more than they intend;
And if the means be just, the conduct true,
Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due.'
As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T'avoid great errors, must the less commit:
Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays,*
For not to know some trifles is a praise."
Most critics, fond of some subservient art,
Still make the whole depend upon a part:
They talk of principles, but notions prize,
And all to one loved folly sacrifice.

Once on a time, La Mancha's knight, they say,"
A certain bard encount'ring on the way,

An impropriety of the grossest kind is here committed. Grammar requires "appears."-WAKEFIELD.

* Dryden's translation of Ovid's Met. book xv.

Greater than whate'er was, or is, or e'er shall be.-HOLT WHITE,

Epilogue to Suckling's Goblins: Things that ne'er were, nor are, nor ne'er will be.-ISAAC REED.

3 Horace, Ars Poet. 351: Verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis Offendar maculis.

Lays for lays down, but, as Warton remarks, the word thus used is very objectionable.

To the same effect Quintilian, lib. i. Ex quo mihi inter virtutes grammatici habebitur, aliqua nescire.— WAKEFIELD.

6 The incident is taken from the Second Part of Don Quixote, first written by Don Alonzo Fernandez de

VOL. II. POETRY.

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Avellanada, and afterwards translated, or rather imitated and newmodelled, by no less an Author than the celebrated Le Sage. "But, Sir, quoth the Bachelor, if you would have me adhere to Aristotle's rules, I must omit the combat. Aristotle, replied the Knight, I grant was a man of some parts; but his capacity was not unbounded; and, give me leave to tell you, his authority does not extend over combats in the list, which are far above his narrow rules. Believe me the combat will add such grace to your play, that all the rules in the universe must not stand in com

petition with it. Well, Sir Knight, replied the Bachelor, for your sake, and for the honour of chivalry, I will not leave out the combat. But still one difficulty remains, which is, that our common theatres are not large enough for it. There must be one erected on purpose, answered the

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