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Ir has been the lot of the poet Words worth, to receive as much abuse on the one hand, and praise on the other, as could very well be given to a man of letters, or, indeed, to any man; and it must be confessed that he wore both these honours, through a long life, with a beautiful and modest bravery. It mattered little to him, in fact, what the generality of men said of him in any way, for he knew they could neither mend nor make him as a poet, and that he must depend upon his own genius, and the inspiration of high Heaven-and upon these alone-if he would really achieve a name and a place in the literature of his country. He had no hankering after vulgar fame, that terrible disease which is fast eating up the manhood of the nation. He saw early enough in life, that fame was not the thing for which a human soul should spend its wealth and energies, and that he who built his life upon that foundation, built upon sand, and would perish in the rage of the whirlwind. He was animated by far higher motives than any mere love of fame could inspire, motives which sprang from the very depths of his moral nature, and gave weight, dignity, and solemnity to his character. He had a work to do in the world, and it was this conviction, so strongly rooted in him, which gave impulse to his efforts and armed him against his adversaries.

It is impossible, however, to form a just estimate of the value of Wordsworth's labours, without taking into the account his historic position. Appearing at a time when poetry was no longer the vocation of inspired men, but the trade of base poetasters and dry, dead formalists-unloved by the muse, and abandoned by the gods--he felt himself called upon to revive her sacred functions, and bring back to her temple the old worship and melody. This was his work, the thing he believed to be his mission; and he devoted all his powers to accomplish it.

From the death of Milton downwards, there had been born in England very few poets, deserving of the name. That grand old monarch of song closed the Augustan era of our literature, and the harp of the bards seemed to be buried with him in the tomb, never more to be unurned. He was the last of the Titans, and no man was found worthy to become the father of a new race of heroes in the domain of song, until Wordsworth appeared. It is true that the reign of Queen Anne had not been altogether barren of singers and literateurs, but they were of the filius nullius sort, and produced no lasting results. The "little man of Twickenham" certainly cannot be considered as the legitimate successor of Milton, although he is the only prominent figure standing out in that dusk twilight of time which intervenes between Milton's death and the French Revolution. For Pope was not in any high sense a poet, although he has given us one or two poems. He was not kindled at the altar of God, his soul overflowing with beauty and truth, and rejoicing in the poet's love for all created things; neither had he any lofty aspirations, teachings, or prophetic warnings. He never went out of himself, as Milton did, falling broad and vast upon the universe, and brooding there, until he had created new worlds out of those old materials. We find no abandonment of this sort in Pope; no loosening of the fiery wings for stellar flights up to the city of God, or for descents into the massy and magnificent "Fire Palaces of Pandemonium" no genius, in short, of any creative kind whatever. mechanical rhymster for the most part; one who ground his thoughts into verse by the cold process of wheels and barrel handles. He was a perfect versewright. No such wares as his, so admirably dovetailed, so polished, decorous, and complete, had ever before been vended on the stalls of Par

nassus.

He was a

And then, how happy are his

B

rhymes! how regular the flow of his verse! A musical snuff-box, mathematically adjusted to its work, could not do the business more handsomely, more faultlessly! and yet, strange to say, there is no melody in Pope. His thoughts never sing, but only try to make us believe that they sing. There are so few notes in his gamut, that we are palled, in spite of ourselves, and in spite of all his clever efforts, to tempt us to enjoyment. Elliott used to say that reading Pope always gave him the headache, and no wonder; for who can bear the everlasting reiteration of the same sounds without weariness? I do not mean, however, to be unjust to Pope, who loved artifice so well that he became thoroughly artificial, and never gave his faculties fair play. The Rape of the Lock," and "Abelard and Heloise," show that he was more than a mechanician, when he dared trust his heart to speak, which was a rare thing with him. His spirit was nearly always in bonds; the slave and not the master of his art. His dry, precise method was a mirror also, not only of his own nature, but of the stiff and corpse-like manners and customs of his time. The very costumes of Queen Anne's reign were Popish; and the gentlefolks cut down all natural exuberances in the trees and hedges of their gardens, to make them fit their own ideas of what nature ought to be, viz., a prim, sedate, cut and dried old maid!

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Pope's aim was to build himself a niche in the classics of his country; hence his extreme accuracy of expression, and the care and labour which he bestowed upon this matter. "Finished to the nails," a phrase which, once applied exclusively to the perfect execution of Greek sculpture-applies equally to Pope, in the structure of his verse. Every word was carefully selected, chiselled, smoothed, and finally hammered into the masonry. His grotto, which again was artificial, and concealed as much as possible from the light and the genial influences of heaven-his grotto, I say, where he studied was no Delphos, but a mechanic's workshop. He believed that neatness could compensate for eloquence; art for genius. Not that he was without either the one or the other; but he thought so much of the form of his poetry, that the subject matter lost its

lustre whilst it was taking shape, and radiated but a forced, artificial glitter, which would do well enough for Vauxhall, but not for the Adytum of Apollo, or the eyes and ears of the Muses.

Nevertheless, Pope was a strong man, of a rare intellect and fancy, possessing, likewise, great power of condensation. Masculine good sense runs through all his poems, and he often precipitates, as it were, the wisdom of ages in a couplet. Had he written more prose and less verse, he would have endured longer, and found more admirers in posterity. Smart, witty, epigrammatic, sententious, and learned, he was well qualified to have made a brilliant, and, to some extent, a solid writer. His Letters, first wrongfully published by Curl, and subsequently by himself (1737); his Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis; his Preface to his edition of Shakespere; and his Treatise or the Bathos, aimed at good old Burnet's History of his own Time; show that he might have been a successful prose writer, had he devoted his talents that way. As it was, the influence he exercised over the times in which he lived, and long afterwards, was not salutary-not, at least, in a literary

sense.

His poetry, as Emerson says of Swedenborg's System of the World, "wants central spontaneity; it is dynanic, not vital; and lacks power to generate life." This is the grand fault of Pope-the fault of his nature. Even the great theme of the "Messiah" could not lift him from his stilts. He stalks for ever on the earth, proudly enough, conscious enough; but the eagle's wings are not given to him. And yet all that he does is admirable in its way, and will never be excelled or equalled. Take, for example, the "Essay on Criticism," or the "Essay on Man." There is nothing in our language to compare with them for faultless expression and sparkling beauty. Dryden-whom Pope professedly studied and followed as his master-does not furnish us with any thing half so artistic. He was naturally careless, sometimes reckless in his utterance; but he had more rough grandeur and power in him than Pope, and we can afford to pardon, on this account, the form of his poetry. Pope never sins against form, but studies it as an art. He is what the Germans call an objective" writer, and loves