lantry, and of a thorough knowledge of the world; and, indeed, he had nothing, in his carriage and deportment, of that affected singularity, which has induced some men of genius to despise, and depart from, the established rules of politeness and civil life. For all poets have not practised the sober and rational advice of Boileau :

Que les vers ne soient pas votre eternel emploi :
Cultivez vos amis, soyez homme de foi.

C'est peu d'etre agréable et charmant dans un livre;
Il fait savoir encore, et converser, et vivre.*

Our nation can boast also, of having produced one or two more poems of the burlesque kind, that are excellent; particularly the SPLENDID SHILLING, that admirable copy of the solemn irony of Cervantes, who is the father and unrivalled model of the true mock-heroic: and the MUSCIPULA, written with the purity of Virgil, whom the author so perfectly understood, and with the pleasantry of Lucian: to which I cannot forbear adding, the SCRIBLERIAD of Mr. Cambridge,

L'Art Poetique, Chant. iv.

Cambridge, the MACHINE GESTICULANTES of Addison, the HOBBINOL of Somerville, and the TRIVIA of Gay.

If some of the most candid among the French critics begin to acknowledge, that they have produced nothing, in point of SUBLIMITY and MAJESTY, equal to the Paradise Lost, we may also venture to affirm, that, in point of DELICACY, ELEGANCE, and fine-turned RAILLERY, on which they have so much valued themselves, they have produced nothing equal to the RAPE OF THE Lock. It is in this composition POPE principally

* This learned and ingenious writer hath made a new remark, in his preface, worth examination and attention. He says, that in first reading the four celebrated mock-heroic poems, he perceived they had all some radical defect. That at last he found, by a diligent perusal of Don Quixote, that Propriety was the fundamental excellence of that work. That all the Marvellous was reconcileable to Probability, as the author lead his hero into that species of absurdity only, which it was natural for an imagination heated with the continual reading of books of chivalry to fall into. That the want of attention to this, was the fundamental error of those poems. For with what PROPRIETY do Churchmen, Physicians, Beaux, and Belles, or Booksellers, in the Lutrin, Dispensary, Rape of the Lock, and Dunciad, address themselves to heathen Gods, offer sacrifices, consult oracles, or talk the language of Homer, and of the heroes of antiquity?

appears a POET, in which he has displayed more imagination than in all his other works taken together. It should, however, be remembered, that he was not the FIRST former and creator of those beautiful machines, the sylphs, on which his claim to imagination is chiefly founded. He found them existing ready to his hand; but has, indeed, employed them with singular judgment and artifice.

SECTION

SECTION V.

OF THE ELEGY TO THE MEMORY OF AN

UNFORTUNATE LADY, THE PROLOGUE
TO CATO, AND THE EPILOGUE

TO JANE SHORE.

THE ELEGY to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, which is next to be spoken of, as it came from the heart, is very tender and pathetic; more so, I think, than any other copy of verses of our author. We are unacquainted with the whole of her history, and with that series of misfortunes which seems to have drawn on the melancholy catastrophe alluded to in the beginning of this ELEGY. She is said to be the same person to whom the Duke of Buckingham has addressed some lines, viz. "To a Lady designing to retire into a Monastery." This design is also hinted at in POPE'S Letters, where he says, in a letter addressed,

R 3

Vol. vii. p. 193. Octavo Edition.

addressed, I presume, to this very person,

"If you are resolved, in revenge, to rob the world of so much example as you may afford it, I believe your design will be vain: for even in a monastery, your devotions cannot carry you so far towards the next world, as to make this lose sight of you but you will be like a star, that, while it is fixed in heaven, shines over all the earth. Wheresoever Providence shall dispose of the most valuable thing I know, I shall ever follow you with my sincerest wishes; and my best thoughts will be perpetually waiting upon you, when you never hear of me or them. Your own guardian angels cannot be more constant, nor more silent."

This ELEGY opens with a striking abruptness, and a strong image; the poet fancies he beholds suddenly the phantom of his murdered friend:

What beck'ning ghost along the moonlight shade,
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
'Tis she!-But why that bleeding bosom gor'd?
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?

This