CHAPTER X.

THE SO-CALLED AUGUSTAN POETS.

Alexander Pope. 1688-1744. (History, p. 154.)
125. CHARACTER OF ATTICUS (ADDISON).

(From the Prologue to the Satires.)

Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires;
Blest with each talent, and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease:
5 Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,

Bear like the Turk, no brother near the throne,
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
10 And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,
A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend;
15 Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging that he ne'er obliged;
Like Cato, give his little senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;
While Wits and Templars every sentence raise,
20 And wonder with a foolish face of praise-
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?

5. Too fond to rule alone: an idiom no longer in use; we should now say "too fond of ruling." Fond may, however, perhaps mean "foolishly eager

here.

13. Blame, Fr. blûmer, is merely another form of blaspheme, which in

Bacon and Shakespeare is used in the sense of to slander or defame generally.

16. Obliged: pronounced, after the French fashion, obleeged; a pronunciation not very long extinct, if, indeed, it do not still survive with some people of the old school.

126. From the ESSAY ON MAN.'

THE SCALE OF BEING.

Far as Creation's ample range extends,
The scale of sensual, mental powers ascends:
Mark how it mounts to Man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass;
5 What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:
Of smell, the headlong lioness between,
And hound sagacious on the tainted green;
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,
10 To that which warbles through the vernal wood;
The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!

Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense, so subtly true,
From poisonous herbs extracts the healing dew?
15 How Instinct varies in the grovelling swine,
Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine!
"Twixt that, and Reason, what a nice barrier!
For ever separate, yet for ever near!

Remembrance and Reflection, how allied;

20 What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide !
And Middle natures, how they long to join,
Yet never pass the insuperable line!
Without this just gradation, could they be
Subjected, these to those, or all to thee?
25 The powers of all, subdued by thee alone,
Is not thy Reason all these powers in one?

2. Sensual, such as belong to sense; there is no suggestion of evil in the word here.

7. Headlong: see note 19, extract 15. 11. Spider's touch: the spider is the spinner, and is so called still in certain parts of England.

13. Nice, Fr. nice, It. Ptg. nescio, fr. Lat. nescius, once meant ignorant, foolish; then trifling, unimportant; then

precise, fastidious: whence it passed to its modern sense. This word has had much the same history as fond. See note 31, extract 55.

17. Barrier, like oblige, had not yet entirely separated itself from its French origin, and must be pronounced here with the accent on the final syllable.

20. Compare line 15 of extract 112.

OMNIPRESENCE OF THE DEITY.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;

That, changed through all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame,

5 Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;
Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent ;

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,

10 As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;

As full, as perfect, in vile Man that mourns,
As the rapt Seraph that adores and burns;
To Him, no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, He bounds, connects, and equals all.

12. Seraph that. burns: the word seraph means the fiery one; Milton, Paradise Lost, v. 249, calls these

existences "celestial Ardours.' Súraf Heb., and ardeo Lat., are the same. (Keightley.)

127. From the RAPE OF THE LOCK.'

DESCRIPTION OF BELINDA.

Not with more glories in th' ethereal plain,
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launch'd on the bosom of the silver Thames.

5 Fair Nymphs and well-drest Youths around her shone,
But every eye was fix'd on her alone.

On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and Infidels adore.
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
10 Quick as her eyes, and as unfix'd as those.

3. Issuing: issue comes from exire through It. escire (uscire) and O. Fr. eisser, issir (Diez).

Rival: rivals were once partners, associates, as in Shakespeare's " the rivals SPECS. ENG. LIT.

of my watch" (Hamlet), Lat. rivales, dwellers on the banks of the same river. The way in which the word obtained its present meaning is obvious.

N

Favours to none, to all she smiles extends;
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.

Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,

And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
15 Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
Might hide her faults, if Belles had faults to hide ;
If to her share some female errors fall,

Look on her face, and you'll forget them all.

This Nymph, to the destruction of mankind,
20 Nourish'd two Locks, which graceful hung behind,
In equal curls, and well conspired to deck,
With shining ringlets, the smooth ivory neck.
Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,
And mighty hearts are held in slender chains.
25 With hairy springes we the birds betray;
Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey;
Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.

21. Deck: the radical meaning of this word is to cover, Lat. tegere, O. E. theccan (whence thatch, Ger. dach, the cover of a house). Miranda in the Tempest "decked the sea with drops full salt;" "Decked with ceremonies" occurs in Julius Cæsar.

The deck of a ship is that which coversin the vessel. Mr. Craik suggests that its present use originated in a confusion between it and decorate, fr. Lat. decorare, to adorn.

128. THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL.

Vital spark of heavenly flame!
Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame!
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying-

Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life!

Hark! they whisper; Angels say,

Sister spirit, come away.
What is this absorbs me quite?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight?
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?

The world recedes; it disappears!

Heaven opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:

Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
Oh Grave! where is thy Victory?

Oh Death! where is thy Sting?

Jonathan Swift. 1667-1745. (History, p. 158.)

129. THE SPIDER AND THE BEE.

From the Battle of the Books, written in reference to the great contest on the comparative merits of the ancient and modern writers. The Bee represents the ancients; the Spider the moderns.

Upon the highest corner of a large window there dwelt a certain spider, swollen up to the first magnitude by the destruction of infinite numbers of flies, whose spoils lay scattered before the gates of his palace, like human bones before the cave of some giant.' The avenues to his castle were guarded with turnpikes and palisadoes, all after the modern way of fortification. After you had passed several courts you came to the centre, wherein you might behold the constable himself in his own lodgings, which had windows fronting to each avenue, and ports to sally out3 upon all occasions of prey or defence. In this mansion he had for some time dwelt in peace and plenty, without danger to his person by swallows from above, or to his palace by brooms from below: when it was the pleasure of fortune to conduct thither a wandering bee, to whose curiosity a broken pane in the glass had discovered itself, and in he went; where, expatiating a while, he at last happened to alight upon one of the outward walls of the spider's citadel; which, yielding to the unequal weight, sunk down to the very foundation.

1. Giant, Fr. géant, signifies etymologically earth-born, Lat. gigas, Gk. γηγενής.

2. Constable: few words have sunk so low as this. A constable was once a comes stabuli, Count of the Stables, or Master of the Horse, one of the highest imperial officials; and subsequently, under the feudal system, discharging impor

tant military functions. Its military sense is still preserved to a degree in the modern Constable of the Tower.

3. Sally out, literally to make a leap out (Fr. saillie), from Lat. salire.

4. Expatiating, roving at large, fr. Lat. exspatiari-now only used in a metaphorical sense.