Alas, great Parent! and again, alas! It is, I fear, in part thy proper fault ;

The fatal negligence wherein thou fellest,

When, from thy heavenward soar descending, thou Didst fold upon the earth thy weary wings.

'T was then thou shouldst have been most wary, then
Thou shouldst have measur'd well thy laboring steps,
When in the ken and cognizance of those
Whose eyes were dazzled by thine upward flight
And lost thee sometimes when most nigh the sun.
For these observ'd thee falter, mark'd thy tread,
Where broken, where irregular, and where weak,
And found thy march on earth was nothing proud,
But dull as others', and forgot thy wings,
Hence deem'd it easy to pursue thy path,
Tread with thy pace, and call their lounge a march.

Perhaps 't is well; perfection rouses Hate,
And Envy loves not brightness never dimm'd.
Haply thou therefore art, for this alone,
Still grac'd with adoration, and inhalest
The incense of a throng that love thee not,
Nor sufferest so foul and large a wrong

As the great poet of the moral lay,
Who came behind thee, in a sequent age,
Whose wit, and melody, and wisdom rare
Gives Imperfection umbrage.

But this said

Reminds me that I have to write to him.

Unwillingly I leave thee. Yet, farewell!

More would I say but that there lacketh space,

And rarely has the full heart room to act.
Commend me to thy comates of the bower;
Read them my words, and offer what I send :
The FLORENTINE, to him my deep respect;
The Patriarch of Song, my filial kiss;
And VIRGIL, O to him, give all my love!

EPISTLE II.

TO POPE.

How surely, in this life's still-changing state,
The brightest names must share the common fate,
Doom'd in a day, whose splendors soon are past,
To rise, to culminate, and set at last,
Thy great example, POPE, may well attest.
Once, who like thee applauded, lov'd, carest ?
But now thy muse, by knave and fool o'erthrown,
Wakes rapture in the good and wise alone.

Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things,
Atones not for that envy which it brings."

Such was the strain that swell'd thy tuneful throat,
When EUROPE, with amazement (1), saw thee float,
Adown the perilous tide of moral song,

Bold but majestic, graceful and yet strong.

Thy scarce-fledg'd plumes, refulgent on the wave,
Receiv'd not more of lustre than they gave. (2)

(1) The Essay on Criticism was written when POPE was in his twentieth year. It does not display the exquisite grace and finish of his later poems, and is certainly wanting in method; but it is distinguished throughout by the same good sense, and, to a certain extent, by the same wit and knowledge of mankind, which have made their author the delight or the envy of succeeding poets,

(2) POPE may be considered to have opened a new field in didactic poetry. Though his model, in some respects, was HORACE, yet no one before him had written precisely like him; and I know not that any one has since.

May we not deem, that later, when thy name
Had toilsome climb'd the summit of its fame,
When, seated on the throne thy mind had rear'd,
Thou sawest thy sceptre dreaded though rever'd,
And while applauding millions shouted round,
The hiss of Envy mingled with the sound,
This very strain, the lesson of the youth,
Then smote the man in all its moral truth?

Yet Hope still whisper'd thee, A time will come,
When Fear shall sleep, and Envy's self be dumb,
When, foe and flatterer alike no more,

Sages will love, and tuneful wits adore,
And all men laud, with unmalignant eyes,

The verse whose charm, with rapture, makes them wise.
Alas! how wilt thou wonder, in thy sphere,
To learn that Envy still survives thee here.
O'er thy cold ashes crouch'd, the demon waits,
And, writhing, syllables the name she hates,
Draws on the dusty stone thy mortal shape,
Nor spares thy morals, though thy song escape. (1)

(1) In the Prologue to the Satires, POPE had said:
"The tale reviv'd, the lie so oft o'erthrown;

The morals blacken'd when the writings 'scape,

The libell'd person, and the pictur'd shape.”

Wise as he was in the human heart, little could the bard have dreamed that these atrocities would be repeated a hundred years after his death, and with all the passion of a fresh attack. His poetic fancy and his faultless ear, his pathos even, his occasional sublimity, might have been forgiven him; but that he should unite sense, and wit, and wisdom, to the sweetest and most vigorous of muses, was an injury and an aggravation intolerable.

Lo! where, a fustian nightcap o'er his brow,
Stretch'd on some mead, or shelter'd in a mow,
His jacket doff'd, one rusty shoe unlac'd,
His stockings garterless, and hose unbrac'd,
The scribe of ballads and false sonnets (1) sits,
Jack Ketch and Rhadamanth of bards and wits!
A roll of candle-wrapper serves his need,
A pewter standish, and a sharpen'd reed.
First, to inspire him with the proper mood,

He chants, twice o'er, the Children in the Wood,
With gesture fierce, then cons, with sweating face,
Thy mean friend's rhapsody on Chevy Chase (2).

(1) Perhaps one of the most remarkable instances of Mr. WORDSWORTH's deficiency of taste, and not the least Gothic of innovations in the art of versification, is the substitution of a bastard stanza of fourteen lines for the legitimate Italian sonnet.* The labors of poetasters are, it is true, greatly facilitated by this change, as in that which has taken place in the construction of the heroic couplet; but the music, of even their trivial compositions, how much of richness has it lost! For the rest, Mr. WORDSWORTH'S sonnets, so lauded by the fellow-feeling of his admirers, are, like the loose verse of his Excursion, little else than prose, and prose of a very tiresome description.

(2) See in the Spectator (70, 74) the papers where ADDISON, a most incompetent critic, however agreeable as a writer, endeavours to run a parallel between Chevy Chase and the Eneid! A folly which will cause no wonder now, when Mr. WORDSWORTH and his admirers, and Mr. CARLYLE and his, have made us familiar with greater aberrances from reason.

SHAKSPEARE made it

The innovation, however, is not originally his. before him, and was his model, in a series of these anomalous stanzas, less prosaic, but more rugged, and very nearly as dull as his own.

† Chevy Chase is undoubtedly an excellent old ballad; but it is made to appear ridiculous by thus placing its low proportions and rude structure side by side with the towering mass and finished architecture of the Æneid.