in the "Beggar's Opera "* and in its wearisome continuation (where the verses are to the full as pretty as in the first piece, however), there is a peculiar, hinted, pathetic sweetness and melody. It

"The merchant, robb'd of pleasure,

Sees tempests in despair;

But what's the loss of treasure

To losing of my dear?

Should you some coast be laid on,
Where gold and diamonds grow,

You'd find a richer maiden,

But none that loves you so.

"How can they say that Nature
Has nothing made in vain ;
Why, then, beneath the water
Should hideous rocks remain ?
No eyes the rocks discover

That lurk beneath the deep,
To wreck the wandering lover,
And leave the maid to weep?'

"All melancholy lying,

Thus wailed she for her dear;
Repay'd each blast with sighing,
Each billow with a tear;
When o'er the white wave stooping,
His floating corpse she spy'd;

Then like a lily drooping,

She bow'd her head, and died."

-A Ballad from the "What d'ye call it?"

"What can be prettier than Gay's ballad, or, rather, Swift's, Arbuthnot's, Pope's and Gay's, in the 'What d'ye call it?' 'Twas when the seas were roaring?" I have been well informed that they all contributed."-Cowper to Unwin, 1783.

* "Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay, what an odd pretty sort of thing a Newgate Pastoral might make. Gay was inclined to try at such a thing for some time, but afterwards thought it would be better to write a comedy on the same plan. This was what gave rise to the Beggar's Opera.' He began on it, and when he first mentioned it to Swift, the Doctor did not much like the project. As he carried it on, he showed what he wrote to both of us; and we now and then gave a correction, or a word or two of advice; but it was wholly of his own writing. When it was done, neither of us thought it would succeed. We showed it to Congreve, who, after reading it over, said, 'It would either take greatly, or be damned confoundedly.' We were all at the first night of it, in great

charms and melts you. It's indefinable, but it exists; and is the property of John Gay's and Oliver Goldsmith's best verse, as fragrance is of a violet, or freshness of a rose.

Let me read a piece from one of his letters, which is so famous that most people here are no doubt familiar with it, but so delightful that it is always pleasant to hear :

"I have just passed part of this summer at an old romantic seat of my Lord Harcourt's which he lent me. It overlooks a common field, where, under the shade of a haycock, sat two lovers-as constant as ever were found in romancebeneath a spreading beech. The name of the one (let it sound as it will) was John Hewet; of the other Sarah Drew. John was a well-set man, about five and twenty; Sarah a brown woman of eighteen. John had for several months borne the labour of the day in the same field with Sarah; when she milked, it was his morning and evening charge to bring the cows to her pail. Their love was the talk, but not the scandal, of the whole neighbourhood, for all they aimed at was the blameless possession of each other in marriage. It was but this very morning that he had obtained her parents' consent, and it was but till the next week that they were to wait to be happy. Perhaps this very day, in the intervals of their work, they were talking of their wedding-clothes; and John was now matching several kinds of poppies and field-flowers to her complexion, to make her a present of knots for the day. While they were thus employed (it was on the last of July), a terrible storm of thunder and lightning arose, that drove the labourers to what shelter the trees or hedges afforded. Sarah, frightened and out of breath, sunk on a haycock; and John (who never separated from her), sat by her side, having raked two or three heaps together, to secure her. Immediately there was heard so loud a crack, as if heaven had burst asunder. The labourers, all solicitous for each other's safety, called to one another: those that were nearest our lovers, hearing no answer, stepped to the place where they lay: they first saw a little smoke, and after, this faithful pair-John, with one arm about his Sarah's neck, and the other held over her face, as if to screen her from the lightning. They were struck dead, and already grown stiff and cold in this tender posture. There was no mark or discolouring on their bodies-only that Sarah's eyebrow was a little singed, and a small spot between her breasts. They were buried the next day in one grave."

uncertainty of the event, till we were very much encouraged by overhearing the Duke of Argyle, who sat in the next box to us, say, 'It will do-it must do !--I see it in the eyes of them!' This was a good while before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon; for the Duke [besides his own good taste] has a more particular knack than any one now living in discovering the taste of the public. He was quite right in this as usual; the good nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a clamour of applause."-POPE. Spence's Anecdotes.

And the proof that this description is delightful and beautiful is, that the great Mr. Pope admired it so much that he thought proper to steal it and to send it off to a certain lady and wit, with whom he pretended to be in love in those days-my Lord Duke of Kingston's daughter, and married to Mr. Wortley Montagu, then his Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople.

We are now come to the greatest name on our list—the highest among the poets, the highest among the English wits and humourists with whom we have to rank him. If the author of the "Dunciad " be not a humourist, if the poet of the "Rape of the Lock" be not a wit, who deserves to be called so? Besides that brilliant genius and immense fame, for both of which we should respect him, men of letters should admire him as being the greatest literary artist that England has seen. He polished, he refined, he thought; he took thoughts from other works to adorn and complete his own; borrowing an idea or a cadence from another poet as he would a figure or a simile from a flower, or a river, stream, or any object which struck him in his walk, or contemplation of Nature. He began to imitate at an early age; * and taught himself to write by copying printed books. Then he passed

* "Waller, Spenser, and Dryden were Mr. Pope's great favourites, in the order they are named, in his first reading, till he was about twelve years old.”— POPE. Spence's Anecdotes.

"Mr. Pope's father (who was an honest merchant, and dealt in Hollands, wholesale) was no poet, but he used to set him to make English verses when very young. He was pretty difficult in being pleased; and used often to send him back to new turn them. 'These are not good rhimes;' for that was my husband's word for verses."-POPE'S MOTHER. Spence.

"I wrote things, I'm ashamed to say how soon. Part of an Epic Poem when about twelve. The scene of it lay at Rhodes and some of the neighbouring islands; and the poem opened under water with a description of the Court of Neptune."-POPE. Ibid.

"His perpetual application (after he set to study of himself) reduced him in four years' time to so bad a state of health, that, after trying physicians for a good while in vain, he resolved to give way to his distemper; and sat down calmly in a full expectation of death in a short time. Under this thought, he wrote letters to take a last farewell of some of his more particular friends, and, among the rest, one to the Abbé Southcote. The Abbé was extremely concerned, both for his