lard? Whether, in fact, maidens in those latitudes do read Eloisa before blowing out their candles I cannot say; but Pope, I warrant, would have thought they would. And they might do worse and better.

Both as a poet and a man Pope had many negations.

'Of love, that sways the sun and all the stars,'

he knew absolutely nothing. Even of the lesser light,

'The eternal moon of love,

Under whose motions life's dull billows move,'

he knew but little.

His Eloisa, splendid as is its diction, and vigorous though be the portrayal of the miserable creature to whom the poem relates, most certainly lacks ‘a gracious somewhat,' whilst no less certainly is it marred by a most unfeeling coarseness. A poem about love it may be a love-poem it is Of the wild benefit of nature,'

not.

'The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills,'

Pope had small notion, though there is just a whiff of Wordsworth in an observation he once hazarded, that a tree is a more po

etical object than a prince in his coronation robes. His taste in landscape gardening was honoured with the approbation of Horace Walpole, and he spent £1,000 upon a grotto, which incurred the ridicule of Johnson. Of that indescribable something, that 'greatness' which causes Dryden to uplift a lofty head from the deep pit of his corruption, neither Pope's character nor his style bears any trace. But still, both as a poet and a man we must give place, and even high place, to Pope. About the poetry there can be no question. A man with his wit, and faculty of expression, and infinite painstaking, is not to be evicted from his ancient homestead in the affections and memories of his people by a rabble of critics, or even a posse of poets. As for the man, he was ever eager and interested in life. Beneath all his faults for which he had more excuse than a whole congregation of the righteous need ever hope to muster for their own shortcomings - we recognise humanity, and we forgive much to humanity, knowing how much need there is for humanity to forgive us. Indifference, known by its hard heart and its

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callous temper, is the only unpardonable sin. Pope never committed it. He had much to put up with. We have much to put up within him. He has given enormous pleasure to generations of men, and will continue so to do. We can never give him any pleasure. The least we can do is to smile pleasantly as we replace him upon his shelf, and say, as we truthfully may, 'There was a great deal of human nature in Alexander Pope.'

DR. JOHNSON.

If we should ever take occasion to say of Dr. Johnson's Preface to Shakspeare what he himself said of a similar production of the poet Rowe, 'that it does not discover much profundity or penetration,' we ought in common fairness always to add that nobody else has ever written. about Shakspeare one-half so entertainingly. If this statement be questioned, let the doubter, before reviling me, re-read the Preface, and if, after he has done so, he still demurs, we shall be content to withdraw the observation, which, indeed, has only been made for the purpose of introducing a quotation from the Preface itself.

In that document, Dr. Johnson, with his unrivalled stateliness, writes as follows:'The poet of whose works I have undertaken the revision may now begin to

assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of established fame and prescriptive veneration. He has long outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit.'

The whirligig of time has brought in his revenges. The Doctor himself has been dead his century. He died on the 13th of December, 1784. Come, let us criticise him. Our qualifications for this high office need not be investigated curiously.

'Criticism,' writes Johnson in the 60th Idler, 'is a study by which men grow important and formidable at a very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may by mere labour be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert such judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critick.'

To proceed with our task by the method. of comparison is to pursue a course open to grave objection, yet it is forced upon us