that of two dialogues between Pope and his friend. In the first his friend remonstrates with him on the impolitic severity, in the second on the personal malignity, of his satire. In both Pope rises to a splendid burst of eloquence which has the genuine ring of sincerity. There may be selfdelusion, there can hardly be hypocrisy, in the magnificent passages on the triumph of vice or the praise of satire. It is not triumphant Vice in the abstract which the poet sees when,

'In golden chains the willing world she draws,
And hers the gospel is, and hers the laws,
Mounts the tribunal, lifts her scarlet head,
And sees pale Virtue carted in her stead,'

but Vice in the concrete form of Walpole's administration; nor is it the general power of victorious evil, but corruption personified in the Whig Government, which drags the genius of England in the dust at her chariot wheels. So again, the poet cheats himself into the belief that his personal satire is animated by antipathy to wrong, by the strong repulsion of his nature to moral evil. He convinces himself that his is theheaven-directed mind,' his the reverent hand, his the honest zeal, to which the gods entrust the

'Sacred weapon, left for truth's defence,

Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence.'

The purity of his motives is the unsubstantial fiction of a dream; but for the moment Pope's illusion is as complete as if the impression were created by the lasting reality of a waking vision.

The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, and 1738,' are not inappropriately arranged as the prologue and epilogue to the Horatian Imitations. No one in passing from one to the other would detect the change from English to Roman soil. So nationalised is the classic garb, so slight and loosely worn the Horatian robe, that their presence is scarcely felt. Whether the idea of imitating Horace was suggested by Bolingbroke, or taken from the example afforded by Rochester, Pope's gifts shine pre-eminently in this class of literature. The social topics of the Imitations are his peculiar element. The monotonous regularity of his verse and the balanced structure of his sentences are relieved by variety of topic. He is never so completely at his ease as in the exercise of his tact of witty passing talk, and of his power of expressing lightly the light things of society. His style, in its glitter and sparkle, is exactly adapted to represent the

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surface of life. No one excels him in the finesse' of language or graceful ease with which he touches contemporary events. If Johnson is right, the unlearned reader has the advantage over the scholar. The Imitations have all the attractions of Pope's original writings; but the man of learning' is shocked by the irreconcileable dissimilitude between Roman images and English manners.' Such is not, however, the general opinion of scholars. The pain of strained applications or incongruities of thought is altogether outweighed by the charm of classical associations, the delight of ingenious parallels, dexterous turns, felicitous renderings. Yet not only is Pope's finished elegance strongly opposed to Horace's studied negligence, but in tone and feeling the Imitations differ widely from the original Satires and Epistles. Horace and Pope had some points of union. They speak for the same social class; they are both, in their way, masters of the art of social poetry. Both had sufficient for their wants, boasted justly of the simplicity of their tastes, offered their potluck or their broccoli and mutton with the same hospitality. The ease with which Pope adapts the autobiographical allusions of Horace show that so far they were in sympathy. Both lived among the great, enjoyed the friendship of ministers, took the same keen pleasure in their participation in the secrets of great events. But one of the bitternesses of Pope's successful life was the peculiarity of his political position. In his struggling youth he was the friend of statesmen in power; in his independent age he belonged to the least powerful section of a disunited Opposition. The Imitations seemed to enforce the contrast. His was not the genial nature to enjoy as a bystander the world's spectacle in which he had once been almost an actor. All his tenderness is for the past; all his malevolence for the present. Such a retrospective mood is uncongenial to the light-hearted worldliness of Horace. Equally alien to the Latin is the bitterness of party spirit which Pope adds to his regretful envy. A partisan with a political mission is not fitted to preach the gospel of Epicureanism. It is impossible to conceive Horace writing Pope's bitterly ironical address to Augustus: his 'sly insinuating style' never risked prosecution for an attack upon rulers. Nor could Pope dismiss from his mind the deep problems of life and death, good and evil, with Horatian equanimity. Questions which Horace waved aside with the true philosophy of calm, Pope tried to account for and explain. They harassed and perplexed his mind: he was too earnest to be indifferent,

too devotional in feeling to attain the imperturbability of scepticism.

Pope's satirical writings are the liveliest commentaries on the social and political life of the time. He holds up his mirror to man

in vigour, in the gout;

Alone, in company; in place, or out;
Early at bus'ness, and at hazard late;
Mad at a foxchase, wise at a debate ;
Drunk at a borough, civil at a ball;

Friendly at Hackney, faithless at Whitehall.'

Next to personal feeling the strongest motive of his satire is party spirit. By it are dictated his bitter allusions to the King and Queen Caroline, the Court of St. James and its hangers-on. No Whigs are praised unless, like Somers or Harley, they belong to an older school, or, like Chesterfield and Pulteney, were in opposition. His attacks on the clergy whose flattery bedropped the Crown,' and his praise of Dissenters, were due rather to his politics than his religion. He sneers at the men of science, the archæologists, bibliomaniacs, and antiquarians, partly because they were encouraged by the Court, but chiefly because they withdrew from political activities and fiddled while Rome was burning. Even his musical taste was regulated by his politics; he preferred Handel to Senesino, because the former was decried by the Whig nobility. He hated the moneyed classes, the Whig millionaires, 'the city's best good men,' as bulwarks of Walpole, Whiggery, and Protestantism. To them he attributed the mania for gambling speculations, the frauds of the Charitable Corporation or the York Building Company, and the consequent financial disturbances which led to Atterbury's exile, and the extra taxation of the Catholics. All his friends belonged to the Opposition; debauchees like Oxenden are freed from the pillory of his verse by joining his faction. The cries of the patriots' against the Court are echoed in his satire. He denounces the excise and standing armies, insinuates the sacrifice of English to Hanoverian interests, declaims against the tame foreign policy through which Spain robs on and Dunkirk's still a port,' attacks the open bribery of Walpole's system of management as the betrayal of the country. He sneers at the poverty of Grub Street pamphleteers and journalists, not so much because it is a crime, as because it is the excuse of 'spurgalled hackneys for enlistment in the service of the Crown. As George II. had been the centre of opposition when heir-apparent, so the

Prince of Wales was now set up against his father, and Pope, who despised kings, could not praise princes too highly. The unfinished satire, 1740,' proclaims the collapse of Bolingbroke's party. Dissatisfied with the lukewarmness of the Opposition Whigs, they distrust Pulteney's vacillation, and suspect that he foams a patriot, to subside a peer.' Bolingbroke returned to France; the secession from the House of Commons failed; the Tory squires sat still and wished for Walpole's death. Pope himself could only look forward to the accession of a young Marcellus of the House of Stuart or of Hanover.

His world had narrowed; he paid the penalty of precocity. His early friends belonged to a previous generation, which he naturally survived. Bolingbroke and Swift, indeed, remained. Bolingbroke was with him during his last illness, but Swift was dying like a poisoned rat in a hole.' His own health broke up rapidly. Disorders accumulated; dropsical asthma set in, for which he vainly consulted Dr. Thomson, a notorious quack. Neither the skill of Cheselden nor the care of Martha Blount could aid him. He died in the evening of the 30th of May, 1744, after receiving the sacraments of the Roman Church. Chesterfield and Bolingbroke might sneer at his sacrifice of a cock to Esculapius, or his certainty of the immortality of the soul, but Pope was, after his fashion, a religious man.

The inconsistencies of his moral character necessarily expose him to one-sided estimates. Nothing will dignify the pettiness of his malice, or palliate the frauds of his career. Yet his life was a gallant struggle against odds, ennobled by frequent generosity. The man who tended his parents with untiring devotion, sheltered his ancient nurse, pensioned his worthless schoolmaster, remembered friends of his youth like Southcote, assisted Mrs. Cope, championed the cause of Mrs. Weston, helped the children of his halfsister, befriended Savage, aided Dodsley, encouraged Johnson, cannot have been wholly false or malignant. His insatiable vanity was coupled with unselfish enthusiasm for the talents of his friends. Thrown back upon himself by a religion which was alien to that of the nation, by deformity, by sickly health, his natural sensitiveness became morbid. The self-torture of such a temperament was keener than any wound he inflicted on others, more deserving of pity than contempt. The one solace of the long disease his life was literary fame; when this is considered, his craving for appreciation ceases to be ridiculous and grows pathetic. His

patriotism, if mistaken, was at least ardent. He raised the profession of letters by his independence of aristocratic and political patronage. Our view of his literary position has been sufficiently indicated. He represented the merits as well as the faults of his age, the lack of enthusiasm, the coarseness, the artificiality as well as the brilliancy and common sense. He was not one of those pocts whose sweet influence 'makes rich the blood of the world.' Yet he wielded his power as a satirist for good rather than evil. If his moral scorn is weaker than his malice, if he attacks not vice but the vicious individual, he 'strengthens the hands of virtue.' His knowledge of human nature is scarcely profound. Character, as moulded in the Georgian era, as expressed in the manners of the day, is depicted in his poetry. The peculiarities of ladies and gentlemen of 1730, not the nature of men and women, are his province. He had the bright fancy of a designer rather than the robust imagination of the inventor. Deficient in originality he rarely attempts the highest flights of poetry. To use modern terminology, he had too much of the intelligence of the Greek, too little of the Hebrew fire. His productions are the work of indefatigable art, not of prodigal nature; but they bear the stamp of perfect style and exquisite finish. His gift is the 'learned sock' of Jonson, not the wood-notes wild' of Shakespeare; his genius is less a divine possession than the offspring of patience.

ART. II.-1. Mountain Observatories. By E. C. PICKERING. 'The Observatory,' No. 78. London: 1883.

2. The Mount Whitney Expedition. By S. P. LANgley. 'Nature,' vol. xxvi. London: 1882.

3. Observations on Mount Etna.

By S. P. LANGLEY. The American Journal of Science,' vol. xx. Newhaven : 1880.

4. An Account of some recent Astronomical Experiments at High Elevations in the Andes. By RALPH COPELAND, Ph.D. Reprinted from "Copernicus." Dublin: 1884.

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N October 1, 1876, one of the millionaires of the New World died at San Francisco. Although owning a no more euphonious name than James Lick, he had contrived to secure a future for it. He had founded and endowed the first great astronomical establishment planted on the heights,