by his

a

or memoranda put into his hands by the bishop. Ruffhead, who had made himself known by an edition of the Statutes at Large, expresses much apprehension lest his subject should be deemed

graver friends too light a one for a person of his profession, but does not seem to have suspected that he might be found too heavy for it. His history of Pope's life is extremely meagre; and although the few facts he gives may be more to be depended on, and his grammar also somewhat more regular, his book is, upon the whole, a duller one than Ayre's. It is made up, too, like that of his predecessor, to a large extent, of extracts from Pope's writings, and of criticism thereupon, in which the learned editor of the Statutes at Large does not shine. Johnson was Pope's next biographer; his Lives of the Poets' appeared in 1781. Tyers published his . Historical Rhapsody'in 1782. Then followed the Life' by Joseph Warton, prefixed to his edition of Pope's works, in nine volumes, published in 1797. Warton had published a first volume of an Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope' in 1756, and a second in 1782, both containing a good deal of biographical mixed with the critical matter; and his formal memoir, as well as his notes, in his edition of Pope's works, is principally a repetition of what had already appeared in his Essay. Then we have the Life,' by Mr. Bowles, accompanying his edition of the works published in 1806; and lastly, that by Mr. Roscoe.

Of all Pope’s biographers, unquestionably the most eminent is Johnson; his performance is the only one that can be considered as having a place in our literature. "Whatever may be its faults, there has been breathed into it the breath of life, which cannot properly be said of any of the others. Compared with it they are all mere compilations, more or less careful, more or less mechanical. If they were all to perish, we might lose some facts, but certainly not a single page the loss of which would make the language the poorer. Of this, however, Mr. Roscoe appears to have no conception. He sees nothing in Johnson's Life of Pope, to distinguish it, as a piece of workmanship, from Warton's, or Bowles's, or his own." His insensibility, indeed, extends to the whole series of Johnson's Lives-a series, he sets out by observing in his Preface, “which, unfortunately for the • memory of our national poets, and the character of our national poetry, he was induced to undertake. We are then told that the unfavourable impression which Cowper had received of the personal character of the generality of our poets could only have been owing to the false representations of Johnson; and that it would not otherwise have been taken up in the country of Spenser, Shakspeare, Sidney, and others, of whose personal characters

or histories Johnson has written nothing, and of Congreve, Garth, Gay, Goldsmith, and other such unspotted names. We may leave our readers to imagine for themselves what a simple notion Mr. Roscoe must have had of Cowper, if he imagined that either the lives or the writings of almost any one of these distinguished individuals would have been very likely to command his unqualified approval, however represented. But upon this same string our author continues to harp throughout his volume. No reader can misunderstand him when he afterwards talks of a work yet to be written, which may rescue the genius ' of English poetry from the dominion of unfeeling criticism, and relieve its professors from the obloquy so unjustly cast upon their 'fame.' Johnson, again, has at least given us a picture of the man Pope, whether it be correct or distorted; Mr. Roscoe has given us none. The particulars which give a lifelike reality to his predecessor's delineation, he has no other way of describing than as that eaves-dropping kind of information in which John'son delighted,' and on which 'not much reliance can be placed.’ This is hardly becoming from a writer whose own attempts in the way of portraiture hardly rise higher than telling us that Pope's usual handwriting, though formal, was distinct and legible'characteristics,' it is solemnly added, "the acquisition of which, 'as it is in the power of every one to attain them, ought to be 'considered as a kind of moral duty.' There is, at any rate, very little in Johnson's Life of this kind of twaddle. Johnson may have occasionally dropped a splenetic remark about Pope or his poetry; but we deny that he has systematically disparaged either him or it. At all events, the worst of his delinquencies in that way are sobriety and good sense, in comparison with Mr. Roscoe's extravagances in the opposite direction. Johnson may be too severe upon the Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,' but his stern and cold criticism is more creditable even to his poetical taste than Mr. Roscoe's declaration that the paragraph about the frequent hearses,' is one of the most terrific passages which poetry, either ancient or modern, can exhibit.' And if the one biographer has detected and chronicled too many of the littlenesses of Pope's conduct and character, even this overkeenness of vision is a more respectable fault than the purblindness of the other, who can see no defects at all in his hero, but boldly pronounces him, without qualification, to be one of the 'best and wisest men that this country has produced.'

If a poetical reputation acquired at an early age were to be taken as a proof of a writer having been born a poet, Pope's claim to that distinction would be perhaps as strong as that of any writer on record. It was not only that, as he has told us, he lisped in

numbers, for the numbers came' (or, as the writer of his life in the 'Biographia Britannica' ludicrously misquotes the line, lisped in verses, for the verses came'-a striking illustration of how slight a touch will sometimes destroy the delicacy of poetical effect). He had hardly reached the age at which manhood ordinarily begins, when he had distanced every other living writer of verse, and secured for himself what would have certainly proved a lasting memory, and a high place in the literature of his country, if he had died then or written nothing more. Mr. Roscoe somewhat misstates the case when he asserts that 'before he had arrived at the twenty-fifth year of his age, he had ⚫ written and published almost all the works on which, as pieces ' of originality, genius, and imagination, his reputation and rank as a poet essentially depend.' Surely the Essay on Man, the Moral Epistles, the Satires, and the Dunciad, are among the compositions that sustain Pope's poetical reputation as essentially and as much as anything else that he has left us; and, however Warton or Bowles might maintain the superiority of his earlier productions in originality, genius, and imagination, such a doctrine is in direct opposition to every critical principle which Mr. Roscoe professes to hold. Indeed, such is his inconsistency upon this point, that we find him in a subsequent page describing the Dunciad as 'a production which, beyond any other, displays 'the poetical powers of the author, the fertility of his invention, the variety of his illustrations, the unrivalled facility and force of his diction, and his perfect acquaintance with every excel'lence of his art.' But it is true, that, before he was four-andtwenty, Pope had given to the world, among other pieces, his Pastorals, his Tale of January and May, imitated from Chaucer, his Essay on Criticism, his Temple of Fame, his Messiah, his Windsor Forest, his Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, and his Rape of the Lock. His Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard was not produced till some years later. Speaking of his Pastorals, which were written when he was sixteen, Warton, who was master of Winchester School, tells us, 'that it has been his fortune, from his way of life, to have seen many compositions ' of youths of sixteen years old far beyond these Pastorals in point ' of genius and imagination, though not, perhaps, of correctness.' Their excellence, indeed,' he adds, might be owing to having had such a predecessor as Pope.' One would have thought, if there was any respect in which these marvellous schoolboys were likely to write the better for having had a model to imitate, it would be correctness, which, however, was the only quality, it seems, in which their compositions were defective. We can only say that we wonder Warton did not preserve a few speci

mens of all this genius and imagination; and also, that nothing should have afterwards come of it of which the world has ever heard. Pope's precocity, it must be acknowledged, was at least not so soon exhausted. Elsewhere Warton instances the reception given to Pope's Pastorals as contrasted with the little notice taken of Gray's Ode on Eton College, on its first appearance, as showing how much more plentiful good compositions must have become when the later than they were when the earlier poet first came before the public; and he adds, that he supposes no critic can be found that will not place Gray's poem far above Pope's. Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, written at twenty-six, and about as long as one of Pope's four Pastorals, consists of ten stanzas, of which the first four, and, in a certain degree, the last, are natural, tender, and melodious, but the remaining five at once as overstrained and as commonplace as any example that it would be easy to cite of posture-making in verse.

Accordingly, everybody has the former by heart, and they have supplied several expressions which have come to be among the proverbial phrases of literature; the latter are by universal tacit consent neglected and forgotten. If Pope's Pastorals can boast of few great beauties, they are equally free from conspicuous blemishes. In the style and upon the principles of execution to which they belong, they are faultless. No such uniform polish of versification had been exhibited by any preceding English writer. No other four hundred continuous lines existed in the language, to which, if you only admitted the principle of poetical composition upon which they were constructed, so little exception could be taken either for the manner or for the matter. In the faculty, call it by what name we may, by which perfect workmanship, according to the standard adopted, is ensured, no previous English poet had equalled Pope. No other, at least, had ever applied the faculty in question so diligently and systematically. It has been commonly denominated judgment; but that term expresses too much in one direction, and too little in another. The highest judgment in a poet would include the adoption, in every case, of the right principle of poetical composition; on the other hand, judgment alone would not produce the faultless workmanship. There seems, however, to be no better name; taste is also at once too comprehensive and not specific enough; skill imports the mere talent of performing a required operation, without any invention at all, as we might talk of skill in versifying; correctness indicates only one effect of the faculty so large an endowment of which Pope brought to the elaboration of his poetry. One of the respects in which his judgment, to adopt the common term, was most won

6

6

6

derful was its early maturity; it is, understood as we have defined it, as remarkably displayed in his Pastorals written at sixteen as in what he wrote at fifty. He improved, of course, in skill and force of execution, as his experience of life became enlarged, and his powers of reflection grew stronger and were more exercised; his style may have acquired much more both of compression and of expression; both the form and the spirit, both the body and the soul, of his poetry may have attained inore of completeness and development; but, in respect of the success with which all its requisitions were met and satisfied, his earliest manner is not to be distinguished from his latest.

Spence records Pope as saying :- About fifteen I got acquainted with Mr. Walsh. He used to encourage me much, • and used to tell me that there was one way left of excelling; ' for, though we had several great poets, we never had any one great poet that was correct; and he desired me to make that my study and aim.' "This, I suppose,' adds Spence, 'first led • Mr. Pope to turn his lines over and over again so often, which • he continued to do till the last; and did it with surprising

facility.' But we have seen that he was also early exercised by his father in extreme rigour and precision of versification. As for his acquaintance with Walsh, he was certainly not fifteen but seventeen when it began; and it was the perusal of his Pastorals in manuscript, sent to him by Wycherley, which made Walsh desire to know the writer. But we do not know whether they may not have been still further polished afterwards by Walsh's advice. Wycherley, whose acquaintance with the young poet seems to have dated from about half a year earlier, was struck with his judgment from the first, and immediately availed himself of bis assistance in the correction of some poems of his own which he was about to send to the press. From the beginning to the end of his career as a writer, it was a maxim or article of faith with Pope, which he never hesitated to avow, that half his strength lay in his talent for correcting, In the Preface to the first volume of his collected pieces, published in 1717, we find him thus expressing himself: I confess it was want of consider‘ation that made me an author; I writ because it amused me; • I corrected because it was as pleasant to me to correct as to « write.' And again, after accounting for the success of the ancients in their literary productions principally from the circumstance that they made it the business of their lives to correct and finish their works for posterity : I believe no one qualifi*cation is so likely to make a good writer as the power of * rejecting his own thoughts; and it must be this (if any thing) that can give me a chance to be one.' Holding steadily to the