The most striking characteristics of his poetry are lucid arrangement of matter, closeness of argument, marvellous condensation of thought and expression, brilliance of fancy ever supplying the aptest illustrations, and language elaborately finished almost beyond example.

His claim to invention is founded on two of his productions only, -the Rape of the Lock and the Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard. The machinery of the Sylphs, in the former piece, was borrowed from Le Compte de Gabalis of the Abbé Villars; but a hasty glance at the Frenchman's curious rhapsody will immediately convince us how little it assisted Pope in the composition of a poem, over which he has diffused the richest colours of imagination. For the Eloisa to Abelard, the Latin Letters of those hapless lovers furnished several hints; but how has Pope elevated them into poetry! the deep pathos, the glowing eloquence, the picturesque imagery, the dramatic effect of that enchanting monologue are all his

own.

Though his writings exhibit incidental glimpses of rural nature, he appears to have had no passionate sense of her beauties: he had more pleasure in describing those external objects which are artificial than those which are natural. His Pastorals are little more than imitations of Theocritus, Virgil, and Spenser; and in his Windsor Forest, which gave him an opportunity of presenting to us distinct and peculiar landscapes, his

descriptions of scenery are general and without individuality.

On account of their excessive ornament, antitheses, epigrammatic flourishes, and the quantity of superfluous words thrust into them for the sake of rhyme, Pope's versions of the Iliad and Odyssey can afford no gratification to those readers who thoroughly relish the severe and simple genius of antiquity.

Pope formed his style on that of Dryden. He has less enthusiasm, less majesty, less force of thought, than his great model, but he has more delicacy of feeling, more refinement, and more correctness. If he never soars to the height which Dryden reached when "the full burst of inspiration came," he never sinks so low as his master ofttimes fell. While soothed by the exquisitely sweet, but somewhat monotonous couplets of Pope,1 we occasionally long for the bolder and more varied music of Dryden's lines.

Cowper says justly of our author,

"But he (his musical finesse was such,
So nice his ear, so delicate his touch,)
Made poetry a mere mechanic art;
And every warbler has his tune by heart.”

Table Talk

PLAN OF AN EPIC POEM,

BY POPE,

TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN IN BLANK VERSE, AND INTITLED

BRUTUS,

ETC.

PLAN OF AN EPIC POEM, ETC.

FROM RUFFHEAD'S LIFE OF POPE, P. 410, ET SEQ.

"THE poem was to have been entitled Brutus. As Eneas was famed for his piety, so his grandson's characteristic was benevolence; the first predominant principle of his character, which prompted his endeavours to redeem the remains of his countrymen, the descendants from Troy, then captives in Greece, and to establish their freedom and felicity in a just form of government.

"He goes to Epirus; from thence he travels all over Greece; collects all the scattered Trojans ; and redeems them with the treasures he brought from Italy.

"Having collected his scattered countrymen, he consults the oracle of Dodona, and is promised a settlement in an Island, which, from the description, appears to have been Britain. He then puts to sea, and enters the Atlantic Ocean.

"The first book was intended to open with the appearance of Brutus at the Straits of Calpe, in sight of the Pillars of Hercules (the ne plus ultra). He was to have been introduced debating in council with his captains, whether it was advisable to launch into the great ocean, on an enterprise bold and hazardous as that of the great Columbus.