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the nation, and sent slavery to foreign climes. The arts only remain in bondage, when a man of science and character shall be openly insulted in the midst of the many useful services he is daily paying the public. Was it ever heard, even in Turkey or Algiers, that a state-astrologer was bantered out of his life by an ignorant impostor, or bawled out of the world by a pack of villanous, deep-mouthed hawkers? Though I print almanacs, and publish advertisements; though I produce certificates under the ministers and churchwardens' hands that I am alive, and attest the same on oath at quarter-sessions, out comes a full and true relation of the death and interment of John Partridge; truth is borne down, attestations neglected, the testimony of sober persons despised, and a man is looked upon by his neighbors as if he had been seven years dead, and is buried alive in the midst of his friends and acquaintance.

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This great poet, "to whom," says Warton, " English poesy and the English language are everlastingly indebted," was born in London, on the 22d of May, 1688. His father was a linen-draper, who had acquired a considerable fortune by trade. Being of a feeble frame and delicate constitution, his early education was chiefly domestic. At the age of twelve, having made considerable progress in the Greek and Latin languages, he resolved to pursue his own plan of study; and his reading, of which he was excessively fond, became uncommonly extensive and various. At a very early period he manfested the greatest fondness for poetry: as he says of himself,

I lisp'd in numbers, and the numbers came.

This taste was in a measure formed from the perusal of Ogilby's Homer, when only ten years of age. Before he was twelve, he wrote his "Ode on Solitude," remarkable for the precocity of sentiment it exhibits, and for that delicacy of language and harmony of versification, for which he afterwards became so eminent. At the age of sixteen, he wrote his "Pastorals," the prin cipal merit of which consists in their correct and musical versification, with a preliminary "Discourse on Pastoral Poetry," "which," says Warton, "is a more extraordinary production than the Pastorals that follow it." At the age of eighteen he produced the « Messiah," a sacred eclogue in imitation of Virgil's "Pollio." In 1709, before he had reached the age of twenty-one, he finished his "Essay on Criticism."

In 1712 he published that remarkable heroi-comic poem, "The Rape of the Lock," in which he has exhibited, more than in any other of his productions, the highest faculty of the poet,-the creative. To this succeeded "The Tem

1 "The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a naine."

Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V. Scene I.

ple of Fame,” in imitation of Chaucer's « House of Fame," "Windsor Forest,” a loco-descriptive poem, and « Eloisa to Abelard,” the most popular, perhaps, of any of his productions. But all these poems, together with his Satires and Episties, added but very little to his fortune. Accordingly, at the age of twenty-five, he issued proposals for the Translation of the Iliad, by subscription. The work was accomplished in five years, and while the profits were such as to gratify his utmost expectations,' the great and signal merits of the translation received the warmest eulogiums from the literary world. In a few years after, in conjunction with Fenton and Broome, he translated the Odyssey. The fame which Pope acquired by these writings drew upon him the attacks of the envious; and a host of critics, individually insignificant, but troublesome from their numbers, continued to annoy him. To retaliate, he published, in 1728, "The Dunciad," a work " which fell among his opponents like an exterminating thunderbolt." But while it has displayed the tempera、 ment of the author in no very enviable light, it has perpetuated the memory of many worthless scribblers, who otherwise would have sunk into oblivion. In 1733 he published his celebrated didactic poem, the "Essay on Man." No sooner did it appear than it was assailed by his enemies, and others, on the ground that it was full of skeptical or infidel tendencies. From this charge it was ably defended by the learned Dr. Warburton, and has since been most triumphantly vindicated in the preliminary discourse of Mr. Roscoe. After the publication of the "Essay on Man" he continued to compose occasional pieces, and planned many admirable works: among the latter was "A History of the Rise and Progress of English Poetry." But he never lived to enter upon the work, for an asthmatic affection, to which he had long been subject, terminated, in 1744, in a dropsy of the chest, and he expired on the 30th of May of that year.4

"What rank," says Dr. Drake, "should be assigned to Pope in a classification of our English poets, has been a subject of frequent inquiry. It is evident, that by far the greater part of his original productions consists of ethic and satiric poetry; and by those who estimate mere moral sentiment, or the exposure, in splendid versification, of fashionable vice or folly, as the highest province of the art, he must be considered as the first of bards. If, however, sublimity, imagination, and pathos be, as they assuredly are, the noblest efforts of the creative powers, and the most difficult of attainment, Pope will be found to have had some superiors, and several rivals. With Spenser, Shaks peare, and Milton, he cannot, in those essential qualities, enter into competi tion; and when compared with Dryden, Young, and Thomson, the mind hesi tates in the allotment of superiority."5

1 He cleared the sum of five thousand three hundred and twenty pounds.

2 "Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before ENVY "-Proves xxvii. 4.

& See Roscoe's edition of Pope, 10 vols. London, one of the choicest contributions to English liter 1ture of the present century. Read, also, that elegant and interesting piece of criticism, Warton's "Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope," a work of which it has been justly said that, "however often perused, it affords fresh delight, and may be considered as one of the books best adapted to excite a love of literature."

4 In person, Pope was short and deformed, of great weakness and delicacy of body, and had, through life, suffered from ill health. Warton remarks, that "his bodily make was of use to him as a writer," quoting the following passage from Lord Bacon's Essays: "It is good to consider de formity not as a sign, which is more deceivable; but as a cause, which seldom faileth of the effect. Whosoever hath any thing fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself from scorn."

Read an admirable "Estimate of the Poetical Character and Writings of Pope," preâzed to the second volume of Roscoe's edition.

Warton, in the dedication of his elegant "Essay on the Writings and Ge nius of Pope," after making four classes of the various English poets, remarks: "In which of these classes Pope deserves to be placed, the following work is intended to determine;" and he closes his second volume, thus: "Where, then, according to the question proposed at the beginning of this Essay, shall we justly be authorized to place our admired Pope? Not, assuredly, in the same rank with Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton; however justly we may applaud the Eloisa,' and the Rape of the Lock; but, considering the correctness, elegance, and utility of his works, the weight of sentiment, and the knowledge of man they contain, we may venture to assign him a place next to Milton, and just above Dryden,1 The preference here given to Pope, above other modern English poets, it must be remembered, is founded on the excellencies of his works in general, and taken altogether; for there are parts and passages in other modern authors, in Young and in Thomson, for instance, equal to any of Pope; and he has written nothing in a strain so truly sublime as the Bard' of Gray."?

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MESSIAH.

A Sacred Eclogue, in imitation of Virgil's Pollio.3
Ye nymphs of Solyma!4 begin the song:
To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong.
The mossy fountains and the sylvan shades,
The dreams of Pindus5 and the Aonian maids,6
Delight no more-O Thou my voice inspire
Who touch'd Isaiah's hallow'd lips with fire!
Rapt into future times, the bard begun:

A Virgin shall conceive, a Virgin bear a Son!
From Jesse's root7 behold a branch arise,
Whose sacred flower with fragrance fills the skies:
The Ethereal Spirit o'er its leaves shall move,
And on its top descend the mystic Dove.

Ye heavens!8 from high the dewy nectar pour,
And in soft silence shed the kindly shower!
The sick9 and weak the healing plant shall aid,
From storms a shelter, and from heat a shade.

All crimes shall cease, and ancient frauds shall fail;
Returning Justice10 lift aloft her scale;

Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend,

And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend.

1 He means next to that first class, which includes Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, naming these In a chronological order, and not in the order of their merits.

2 And what has he written equal to the "Elegy," or the "Progress of Poesy," of Gray!

8 Pollio was a Roman senator in the time of Augustus, and celebrated not only as a general, but as patron of letters and the fine arts. Virgil addressed to him his fourth Eclogue at a time (B. C. 40) when Augustus and Antony had ratified a league of peace, and thus, as it was thought, established the tranquillity of the empire, as in the times of the "golden age." In this Eclogue Virgil is most eloquent in the praise of peace, and in some of his figures and expressions is thought to have imiated the prophecies of Isaiah, which, probably, he had read in the Greek Septuagint. But however this may be as regards Virgil, Roscoe well remarks of this production of Pope, that "the idea of aniting the sacred prophecies and grand imagery of ISAIAH, with the mysterious visions and pomp of numbers displayed in the POLLIO, thereby combining both sacred and heathen mythology in prelicting the coming of the MESSIAH, is one of the happiest subjects for producing emotions of sublinity that ever occurred to the mind of a poet.”

4 Jerusalem.

7 isa. XI. 1.

A mountain in Thessaly, sacred to the Muses.
8 lea. xlv. 8.
9 Isa. xxv. 4.

6 Aonian maids--the Muses.

10 Isa. ix. 7.

Swift fly the years, and rise the expected morn!
O spring to light, auspicious Babe, be born!
See, Nature hastes her earliest wreaths to bring,
With all the incense of the breathing spring:
See lofty Lebanon1 his head advance,
See nodding forests on the mountains dance;
See spicy clouds from lowly Saron rise,
And Carmel's flowery top perfumes the skies!
Hark! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers;
Prepare the way!2 A God, a God appears!
A God, a God! the vocal hills reply;
The rocks proclaim the approaching Deity.
Lo, earth receives him from the bending skies!
Sink down, ye mountains; and ye valleys, rise!
With heads declined, ye cedars, homage pay;
Be smooth, ye rocks; ye rapid floods, give way.
The Saviour comes! by ancient bards foretold!
Hear him, ye deaf;3 and all ye blind, behold!
He from thick films shall purge the visual ray,
And on the sightless eyeball pour the day:
"Tis he the obstructed paths of sound shall clear,
And bid new music charm th' unfolding ear:
The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego,
And leap exulting, like the bounding roe.
No sigh, no murmur, the wide world shall hear;
From every face he wipes off every tear.
In adamantine chains shall death be bound,
And hell's grim tyrant feel th' eternal woun..
As the good shepherd tends his fleecy care,
Seeks freshest pasture, and the purest air;
Explores the lost, the wandering sheep directs,
By day o'ersees them, and by night protects;
The tender lambs he raises in his arms,
Feeds from his hand, and in his bosom warms:
Thus shall mankind his guardian care engage,
The promised 5 father of the future age.
No more shall nation against nation rise,
Nor ardent warriors meet with hateful eyes,
Nor fields with gleaming steel be cover'd o'er,
The brazen trumpets kindle rage no more;
But useless lances into scythes shall bend,
And the broad falchion in a ploughshare end.
Then palaces shall rise; the joyful son7
Shall finish what his short-lived sire begun;
Their vines a shadow to their race shall yield,
And the same hand that sow'd shall reap the field.
The swain in barren deserts with surprise

Sees lilies spring, and sudden verdure rise;
And starts amidst the thirsty wilds to hear
New falls of water murmuring in his ear.
On rifted rocks, the dragon's late abodes,
The green reed trembles, and the bulrush nods.

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Waste sandy valleys,' once perplex'd with thorn,
The spiry fir and shapely box adorn:

To leafless shrubs the flowering palm succeed,
And odorous myrtle to the noisome weed.

The lambs2 with wolves shall graze the verdant mead,
And boys in flowery bands the tiger lead.
The steer and lion at one crib shall meet,
And harmless serpents lick the pilgrim's feet.
The smiling infant in his hand shall take
The crested basilisk and speckled snake,
Pleased, the green lustre of the scales survey,
And with their forky tongues shall innocently play.
Rise, crown'd with light, imperial Salem, rise,
Exalt thy towery head, and lift thine eyes!
See a long race thy spacious courts adorn;
See future sons and daughters, yet unborn,
In crowding ranks on every side arise,
Demanding life, impatient for the skies!
See barbarous nations at thy gates attend,
Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend;
See thy bright altars throng'd with prostrate kings,
And heap'd with products of Sabean7 springs!
For thee Idume's spicy forests blow,
And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow.
See heaven its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon thee in a flood of day!
No more the rising Sun8 shall gild the morn,
Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver horn;
But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays,
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze

O'erflow thy courts: the Light himself shall shine
Reveal'd, and God's eternal day be thine!
The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay,
Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away;
But fix'd his word, his saving power remains;

Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns!

Of the "Essay on Criticism," Dr. Johnson remarks, "if he had written nothing else, it would have placed him among the first critics and the first poets; as it exhibits every mode of excellence that can embellish or dignify composition-selection of matter, novelty of arrangement, justness of precept, splendor of illustration, and propriety of digression."

PRIDE.

10ין

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!

2 Isa. xi 6-8.
7 Isa. lx. 6.

3 Isa. Ixv. 25.
8 Isa. lx. 19, 20.

4 Isa. Ix. 1.

5 Isa. lx. 4.

9 Isa. 11. 6; liv. 10.

1 Isa. xli. 19; lv. 13. Tua. Ix. 3. 10 "For a person only twenty years old to have produced such an Essay, so replete with a knowleage of life and manners, such accurate observations on men and books, such variety of literature, Bach strong good sense, and refined taste and judgment, has been the subject of frequent and of just admiration."- Warton.

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