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Partridge can smell a knave as far as Grub street,-although he lies in the most exalted garret, and writes himself 'squire:--but I will keep my temper, and proceed in the narration.

I could not stir out of doors for the space of three months after this, but presently one comes up to me in the street; "Mr. Partridge, that coffin you was last buried in I have not been yet pa.d for." 66 Doctor," cries another dog, "how do you think people can live by making of graves for nothing? next time you die, you may even toll out the bell yourself, for Ned." A third rogue tips me by the elbow, and wonders how I have the conscience to sneak abroad without paying my funeral expenses. "Bless me!" says one, "I durst have sworn that was honest Dr. Partridge, my old friend; but poor man, he is gone." "I beg your pardon," says another, "you look so like my old acquaintance that I used to consult on some private occasions; but, alack, he is gone the way of all flesh." "Look, look, look," cries a third, after a competent space of staring at me, "would not one think our neighbor the almanac-maker was crept out of his grave to take the other peep at the stars in this world, and show how much he is improved in fortune-telling by having taken a journey to the other?"

Nay, the very reader of our parish, a good, sober, discreet person, has sent two or three times for me to come and be buried decently, or send him sufficient reasons to the contrary, or, if I have been interred in any other parish, to produce my certificate, as the act requires. My poor wife is almost run distracted with being called widow Partridge, when she knows it is false; and once a term she is cited into the court to take out letters of administration. But the greatest grievance is, a paltry quack, that takes up my calling just under my nose, and in his printed directions with N. B. says, he lives in the house of the late ingenious Mr. John Partridge, an eminent practitioner in leather, physic, and astrology.

But to show how far the wicked spirit of envy, malice, and resentment can hurry some men, my nameless old persecutor had provided me a monument at the stone-cutters, and would have erected it in the parish church; and this piece of notorious and expensive villany had actually succeeded, if I had not used my utmost interest with the vestry, where it was carried at last but by two voices, that I am alive. That stratagem failing, out comes a long sable elegy, bedecked with hour-glasses, mattocks, sculls, spades, and skeletons, with an epitaph as confidently written to abuse me, and my profession, as if I had been under ground these twenty years. And, after such barbarous treatment as this, can the world blame me, when I ask what is become of the freedom of an Eng lishman? and where is the liberty and property that my old glo rious friend came over to assert? We have driven popery out of

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the nation, and sent slavery to foreign climes. The arts only re'main in bondage, when a man of science and character shall be openly insulted in the midst of the many useful services he is daily paying the public. Was it ever heard, even in Turkey or Algiers, that a state-astrologer was bantered out of his life by an ignorant impostor, or bawled out of the world by a pack of villanous, deep-mouthed hawkers? Though I print almanacs, and publish advertisements; though I produce certificates under the ministers and churchwardens' hands that I am alive, and attest the same on oath at quarter-sessions, out comes a full and true relation of the death and interment of John Partridge; truth is borne down, attestations neglected, the testimony of sober persons despised, and a man is looked upon by his neighbors as if he had been seven years dead, and is buried alive in the midst of his friends and acquaintance.

ALEXANDER POPE. 1688-1744.

THIS great poet, "to whom," says Warton, « English poesy and the English language are everlastingly indebted," was born in London, on the 22d of May, 1688. His father was a linen-draper, who had acquired a considerable for. tune by trade. Being of a feeble frame and delicate constitution, his early education was chiefly domestic. At the age of twelve, having made considerable progress in the Greek and Latin languages, he resolved to pursue his own plan of study; and his reading, of which he was excessively fond, became uncommonly extensive and various. At a very early period he manifested the greatest fondness for poetry: as he says of himself,

I lisp'd in numbers, and the numbers came.

This taste was in a measure formed from the perusal of Ogilby's Homer, when only ten years of age. Before he was twelve, he wrote his "Ode on Solitude," remarkable for the precocity of sentiment it exhibits, and for that delicacy of language and harmony of versification, for which he afterwards became so eminent. At the age of sixteen, he wrote his "Pastorals," the prin cipal merit of which consists in their correct and musical versification, with a preliminary "Discourse on Pastoral Poetry," "which," says Warton, "is a more extraordinary production than the Pastorals that follow it." At the age of eighteen he produced the "Messiah," a sacred eclogue in imitation of Virgil's "Pollio." In 1709, before he had reached the age of twenty-one, he finished his "Essay on Criticism."

In 1712 he published that remarkable heroi-comic poem, "The Rape of the Lock," in which he has exhibited, more than in any other of his productions. the highest faculty of the poet,-the creative. To this succeeded "The Tem

1 "The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name."

Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V. Scene I.

ple of Fame," in imitation of Chaucer's "House of Fame," "Windsor Forest,"
a loco-descriptive poem, and "Eloisa to Abelard," the most popular, perhaps,
of any of his productions. But all these poems, together with his Satires and
Epistles, added but very little to his fortune. Accordingly, at the age of
twenty-five, he issued proposals for the Translation of the Iliad, by subscrip-
tion. The work was accomplished in five years, and while the profits were
such as to gratify his utmost expectations, the great and signal merits of the
-translation received the warmest eulogiums from the literary world. In a few
years after, in conjunction with Fenton and Broome, he translated the Odyssey.
The fame which Pope acquired by these writings drew upon him the
attacks of the envious; and a host of critics, individually insignificant, but
troublesome from their numbers, continued to annoy him. To retaliate, he
published, in 1728, "The Dunciad," a work " which fell among his opponents
like an exterminating thunderbolt." But while it has displayed the tempera-
ment of the author in no very enviable light, it has perpetuated the memory
of many worthless scribblers, who otherwise would have sunk into oblivion.
In 1733 he published his celebrated didactic poem, the "Essay on Man." No
sooner did it appear than it was assailed by his enemies, and others, on the
ground that it was full of skeptical or infidel tendencies. From this charge
it was ably defended by the learned Dr. Warburton, and has since been most
triumphantly vindicated in the preliminary discourse of Mr. Roscoe.3 After
the publication of the "Essay on Man" he continued to compose occasional
pieces, and planned many admirable works: among the latter was "A His-
tory of the Rise and Progress of English Poetry." But he never lived to enter
upon the work, for an asthmatic affection, to which he had long been subject,
terminated, in 1744, in a dropsy of the chest, and he expired on the 30th of
May of that year.

"What rank," says Dr. Drake, "should be assigned to Pope in a classification of our English poets, has been a subject of frequent inquiry. It is evident, that by far the greater part of his original productions consists of ethic and satiric poetry; and by those who estimate mere moral sentiment, or the exposure, in splendid versification, of fashionable vice or folly, as the highest province of the art, he must be considered as the first of bards. If, however, sublimity, imagination, and pathos be, as they assuredly are, the noblest efforts of the creative powers, and the most difficult of attainment, Pope will be found to have had some superiors, and several rivals. With Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, he cannot, in those essential qualities, enter into competi tion; and when compared with Dryden, Young, and Thomson, the mind hesi tates in the allotment of superiority."

1 He cleared the sum of five thousand three hundred and twenty pounds.

2" Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before ENVY -Proveros

xxvii. 4.

* See Roscoe's edition of Pope, 10 vols. London, one of the choicest contributions to English litera ture of the present century. Read, also, that elegant and interesting piece of criticism, Warton's "Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope," a work of which it has been justly said that, "however often perused, it affords fresh delight, and may be considered as one of the books best adapted to excite a love of literature."

In person, Pope was short and deformed, of great weakness and delicacy of body, and had, through life, suffered from ill health. Warton remarks, that "his bodily make was of use to him as a writer," quoting the following passage from Lord Bacon's Essays: "It is good to consider deformity not as a sign, which is more deceivable; but as a cause, which seldom faileth of the effect. Whosoever hath any thing fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself from scorn."

6 Read an admirable "Estimate of the Poetical Character and Writings of Pope," prefixed to the second volume of Roscoe's edition.

Warton, in the dedication of his elegant "Essay on the Writings and Ge nius of Pope," after making four classes of the various English poets, remarks: "In which of these classes Pope deserves to be placed, the following work is intended to determine;" and he closes his second volume, thus: "Where, then, according to the question proposed at the beginning of this Essay, shall we justly be authorized to place our admired Pope? Not, assuredly, in the same rank with Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton; however justly we may applaud the Eloisa,' and the Rape of the Lock;' but, considering the correctness, elegance, and utility of his works, the weight of sentiment, and the knowledge of man they contain, we may venture to assign him a place next to Milton, and just above Dryden. The preference here given to Pope, above other modern English poets, it must be remembered, is founded on the excellencies of his works in general, and taken altogether; for there are parts and passages in other modern authors, in Young and in Thomson, for instance, equal to any of Pope; and he has written nothing in a strain so truly sublime as the 'Bard' of Gray."2

MESSIAH.

A Sacred Eclogue, in imitation of Virgil's Pollio.3
Ye nymphs of Solyma!4 begin the song:
To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong
The mossy fountains and the sylvan shades, i
The dreams of Pindus and the Aopian maids,
Delightno more Thou my voicef inspire!
Who touch'd Isaiah's hallow'd lips/with fire!

Rapt into future times, the bard begun :
A Virgin shall conceive, a Virgin bear a Son!
From Jesse's root7 behold a branch arise,
Whose sacred flower with fragrance fills the skies:
The Ethereal Spirit o'er its leaves shall move,
And on its top descend the mystic Dove.
Ye heavens!s from high the dewy nectar pour,
And in soft silence shed the kindly shower!
The sick and weak the healing plant shall aid,
From storms a shelter, and from heat a shade.
All crimes shall cease, and ancient frauds shall fail;
Returning Justice10 lift aloft her scale;

Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend,

And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend.

1 He means next to that first class, which includes Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, naming these in a chronological order, and not in the order of their merits.

2 And what has he written equal to the "Elegy," or the "Progress of Poesy," of Gray!

3 Pollio was a Roman senator in the time of Augustus, and celebrated not only as a general, but as a patron of letters and the fine arts. Virgil addressed to him his fourth Eclogue at a time (B. C. 40) when Augustus and Antony had ratified a league of peace, and thus, as it was thought, established the tranquillity of the empire, as in the times of the "golden age." In this Eclogue Virgil is most eloquent in the praise of peace, and in some of his figures and expressions is thought to have imitated the prophecies of Isaiah, which, probably, he had read in the Greek Septuagint. But however this may be as regards Virgil, Roscoe well remarks of this production of Pope, that the idea of uniting the sacred prophecies and grand imagery of ISAIAH, with the mysterious visions and pomp of numbers displayed in the POLLIO, thereby combining both sacred and heathen mythology in predicting the coming of the MESSIAH, is one of the happiest subjects for producing emotions of sublinity that ever occurred to the mind of a poet."

4 Jerusalem.

7 Isa. x. 1.

5 A mountain in Thessaly, sacred to the Muses.
9 Isa. XXV. 4.

8 Isa. xlv. 8.

6 Aonian maids-the Muses,

10 Isa. ix. 7.

3

Swift fly the years, and rise the expected morn!
O spring to light, auspicious Babe, be born!
See, Nature hastes her earliest wreaths to bring,
With all the incense of the breathing spring:
See lofty Lebanon1 his head advance,
See nodding forests on the mountains dance;
See spicy clouds from lowly Saron rise,
And Carmel's flowery top perfumes the skies!
Hark! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers;
Prepare the way!2 A God, a God appears!
A God, a God! the vocal hills reply;
The rocks proclaim the approaching Deity.
Lo, earth receives him from the bending skies!
Sink down, ye mountains; and ye valleys, rise!
With heads declined, ye cedars, homage pay;
Be smooth, ye rocks; ye rapid floods, give way.
The Saviour comes! by ancient bards foretold!
Hear him, ye deaf; and all ye blind, behold!
He from thick films shall purge the visual ray,
And on the sightless eyeball pour the day:
"Tis he the obstructed paths of sound shall clear,
And bid new music charm th' unfolding ear:
The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego,
And leap exulting, like the bounding roe.
No sigh, no murmur, the wide world shall hear;
From every face he wipes off every tear.
In adamantine chains shall death be bound,
And hell's grim tyrant feel th' eternal wound.
As the good shepherd4 tends his fleecy care,
Seeks freshest pasture, and the purest air;
Explores the lost, the wandering sheep directs,
By day o'ersees them, and by night protects;
The tender lambs he raises in his arms,
Feeds from his hand, and in his bosom warms:
Thus shall mankind his guardian care engage,
The promised father of the future age.
No more shall nation against nation rise,
Nor ardent warriors meet with hateful eyes,
Nor fields with gleaming steel be cover'd o'er,
The brazen trumpets kindle rage no more;
But useless lances into scythes shall bend,
And the broad falchion in a ploughshare end.
Then palaces shall rise; the joyful son
Shall finish what his short-lived sire begun:
Their vines a shadow to their race shall yield,
And the same hand that sow'd shall reap the field.
The swain in barren deserts 8 with surprise

Sees lilies spring, and sudden verdure rise;
And starts amidst the thirsty wilds to hear
New falls of water murmuring in his ear.
On rifted rocks, the dragon's late abodes,
The green reed trembles, and the bulrush nods.

1 Isa. xxxv. 2. 618a. ix. 6.

2 Isa. xl. 3, 4.
6 Isa. ii. 4.

3 Isa. xlii. 18; xxxv. 5, 6.

7 Isa. lxv. 21, 22.

4 Isa. XI. 11.

8 Isa. xxxv 1,7

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