Vig'rous he rises; from th' effluvia strong
Imbibes new life, and scours and stinks along;
Re-passes Lintot, vindicates the race,

Nor heeds the brown dishonours of his face.

The bards and scribblers next compete, and the scene is moved further eastward

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 thro' thick and thin,
And who the most in love of dirt excel,

Or dark dexterity of groping well.'

Other games and trials of skill follow, but they are too coarse for quotation, and Pope in writing them dishonours himself as well as the miserable scribblers whom he describes.

Towards the close of his life Pope added to the 'Dunciad' a fourth book, which is not so much an attack on particular individuals as a general satire on the philosophy and science and theology of the time. The closing lines have been greatly admired, and Thackeray says that in them Pope shows himself the equal of all poets of all times.'

She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold
Of Night Primæval, and of Chaos old!
Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying Rainbows die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sick'ning stars fade off th' etherial plain;
As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest,
Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest;

BB

Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head!
Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense !
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!

In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.

Nor public Flame nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restor'd;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:

Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,
And universal Darkness buries All.

After the completion of the three books of the 'Dunciad' Pope's next great work was the Essay on Man,' a series of four epistles addressed to Bolingbroke, who indeed, it would seem, had suggested the plan and prompted Pope in the execution of the work.

The late Lord Bathurst repeatedly assured me that he had read the whole scheme of the Essay on Man in the handwriting of Bolingbroke, and drawn up in a series of propositions which Pope was to versify and illustrate.'

And Bolingbroke in his letters to Pope traces the outline which he wishes his friend to fill up.

My thoughts, in what order soever they flow, shall be communicated to you just as they pass through my mind, just as they use to be when we converse together on these, or any other subjects; when we saunter alone, or as we have often done with good Arbuthnot, and the jocose dean of St. Patrick's, among the multiplied scenes of your little garden. That theatre is large enough for my ambition.

Warton.

6

The Essay' is intended, like Milton's great poem, 'to vindicate the ways of God to man,' but to execute worthily such a task was beyond Pope's powers. Neither his imagination nor his philosophy was sufficiently profound, and the famous poem is little more than a rendering into brilliant verse of the commonplaces of the philosophy of Locke and Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke.

Scattered through the poem are many of those fine lines which everyone remembers, and which have become as it were proverbs in the language. The following are a few, and there are many more :

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blest.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper Study of Mankind is Man.

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As, to be hated, needs but to be seen.

The great truth which the poet seeks to establish is 'that, of all possible systems, infinite wisdom has formed the best; and that the seeming defects and blemishes in the universe conspire to its general beauty.' Some portion of this truth, if it be a truth, is set forth in the following noble lines :

All are but parts of one stupendous Whole,
Whose Body Nature is, and God the Soul;
That, chang'd thro' all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the Earth, as in th' Aethereal frame,
Warms in the Sun, refreshes in the Breeze,
Glows in the Stars, and blossoms in the Trees,
Lives thro' all Life, extends thro' all Extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent ;

Warton.

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
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.

The poem is closed with an address to Bolingbroke, which is very beautiful and pathetic.

Come then, my Friend! my Genius! come along;

Oh Master of the Poet, and the Song!

And while the Muse now stoops, or now ascends,
To Man's low Passions, or their glorious Ends,
Teach me like thee, in various nature wise,
To fall with Dignity, with Temper rise;
Form'd by thy Converse, happily to steer
From grave to gay, from lively to severe,
Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease,
Intent to reason, or polite to please.

Oh! while along the stream of Time thy Name
Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame,
Say, shall my little Bark attendant sail,
Pursue the Triumph, and partake the Gale?
And shall this verse to future age pretend
Thou wert my Guide, Philosopher, and Friend?
That, urg'd by thee, I turn'd the tuneful Art
From Sounds to Things, from Fancy to the Heart;
For Wit's false Mirror held up Nature's Light;
Shew'd erring Pride, Whatever is, is Right.

Pope continued his labours to the last.

After the

Essay on Man' he wrote the Moral Essays,' a series of poetical epistles on the Characters of Men,' the Characters of Women,' and on the Use of Riches.' In these works are some of his most finely finished sketches, notably that of the death scene of the witty and profligate Duke of Buckingham, of the gay court of Charles II.

In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung
The floors of plaister, and the walls of dung,
On once a flock bed, but repair'd with straw,
With tape-tyed curtains, never meant to draw,
The George and Garter dangling from that bed
Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
Great Villiers lies--alas! how chang'd from him,
That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!
Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove,
The bow'r of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
Or just as gay, at Council, in a ring

Of mimick'd Statesmen, and their merry King.

6

In 1742 Pope added the fourth book to the Dunciad,' and two years later the end came, and in May, at the age of fifty-six, he passed away as if in a sleep.

BISHOP BERKELEY

GEORGE BERKELEY, the subtle and imaginative philosopher of a prosaic and unphilosophical age, was born in 1685 in Kilkenny on the banks of the Nore. The vale of the Nore is beautiful, and its scenery was well fitted to feed and stimulate the dreamy nature of the boy. He spent four years in Kilkenny school, the Eton of Ireland,' where Swift himself had been a scholar, and in 1700 he came to Trinity College, Dublin, where he remained for thirteen years.

Locke's famous Essay was one of the textbooks in use at the university, and this with Plato's Dialogues seems to have been Berkeley's favourite reading, and his earliest writings were intended to further develop por-tions of the Essay or to combat parts of it which seemed to him to be erroneous.