This labour passed, by Bridewell all descend,
(As morning prayer and flagellation end)
To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams
Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames,
The king of dykes! than whom no sluice of mud
With deeper sable blots the silver flood.
"Here strip, my children! here at once leap in,

Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin,
And who the most in love of dirt excel,

Or dark dexterity of groping well."

But the mere technical mastery in expressing unworthy hatred gives no man a long lease of posterity's ear. Pope survives as a satirist by those Moral Essays (couched in the form of Epistles to persons of distinction) which deal with particular examples of general themes. Here is a part of the passage in which he illustrates the persistence of a ruling passion:

"Odious! in woollen! 'twould a saint provoke,"
(Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke)
"No, let a charming chintz, and Brussels lace
Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face:
One would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead—
And-Betty-give this cheek a little red."

Here again from the essay on the characters of women, is a sketch of what many take to be a type known only to-day:

Flavia's a wit, has too much sense to pray;

To toast our wants and wishes, is her way;
Nor asks of God, but of her stars, to give
The mighty blessing, "while we live to live."
Then all for death, that opiate of the soul!

Lucretia's dagger, Rosamonda's bowl.

Say, what can cause such impotence of mind?

A spark too fickle, or a spouse too kind?

Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please;
With too much spirit to be e'er at ease;
With too much quickness ever to be taught;
With too much thinking to have common thought:
You purchase pain with all that joy can give,
And die of nothing but a rage to live.

There is no end to things in Pope as good and as quotable, and, perhaps one may say, as little known. What everybody does know is the portrait which he drew of "Atticus,” and published when Addison was dead.

It is worth while to compare this with Dryden's sketch of Shaftesbury. Achitophel's ill qualities as statesman are first depicted with damning emphasis; but, as a real offset there follows the passage that praises the upright judge. Pope, on the other hand, leads off with his eulogy, saying of Addison what all the world said, and saying it better: then after this ostentation of impartiality comes the subtle onslaught, stab upon stab, with the venom of contemptuous ridicule left in every wound. The passage has been taken, and rightly, for Pope's most typical achievement in poetry: beside it we can put nothing from him but the fiercer attack on Sporus (Lord Hervey), or the close of the Dunciad which celebrates the final triumph of the Dull. These are the things of which we feel that verse is an essential part; that emotion so vibrant demands metrical expression. Such other passages as the eulogy of

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"The Man of Ross," a Welsh philanthropist, need the verse,form in another sense; without it they would be insignificant. But Pope's poetry, where it has the character of true poetry, is always the utterance of a strong passion-the passion of hate. And herein he differs from many other satirists, but above all from the greatest of all British satirists, his friend Swift, in that his hatred was not for principles but for persons; not for man or men, but this or that individual. Literary and social jealousy is the strongest of all his feelings. All the more wonderful is it that the friendship between him and Swift should have lasted out life in both, though tried by so severe a test as collaboration and partnership. But the credit of this belongs, I think, not to Pope.

STEPHEN GWYNN.