12. After finishing the Iliad, Pope undertook a translation of the Odyssey of Homer. This was not so successful; nor was it so well done. In fact, Pope translated only half of it himself; the other half was written by two scholars called Broome and Fenton. His next great poem was the Dunciad,—a satire upon those petty writers, carping critics, and hired defamers who had tried to write down the reputation of Pope's Homeric work. "The composition of the 'Dunciad' revealed to Pope where his true strength lay, in blending personalities with moral reflections."

13. Pope's greatest works were written between 1730 and 1740; and they consist of the Moral Essays, the Essay on Man, and the Epistles and Satires. These poems are full of the finest thoughts, expressed in the most perfect form. Mr Ruskin quotes the couplet

"Never elated, while one man's oppressed;
Never dejected, whilst another's blessed,"-

as "the most complete, concise, and lofty expression of moral temper existing in English words." The poem of Pope which shows his best and most striking qualities in their most characteristic form, is probably the Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot or Prologue to the Satires. In this poem occur the celebrated lines about Addison— which make a perfect portrait, although it is far from being a true likeness.

His pithy lines and couplets have obtained a permanent place in literature. Thus we have :

"True wit is nature to advantage dressed,

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

Good-nature and good-sense must ever join.

To err is human, to forgive divine."

"All seems infected that the infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the jaundic'd eye."

"Fear not the anger of the wise to raise ;

Those best can bear reproof who merit praise."

The greatest conciseness is visible in his epigrams and in his compliments :

"A vile encomium doubly ridicules:

There's nothing blackens like the ink of fools."

"And not a vanity is given in vain."

"Would ye be blest? despise low joys, low gains,
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains,

Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains."

14. Pope is the foremost literary figure of his age and century; and he is also the head of a school. He brought to perfection a style of writing verse which was followed by hundreds of clever writers. Cowper says of him :

"But Pope-his musical finesse was such,

So nice his ear, so delicate his touch,

Made poetry a mere mechanic art,

And every warbler has his tune by heart."

Pope was not the poet of nature or of humanity; he was the poet of "the town," and of the Court. He was greatly influenced by the neatness and polish of French verse; and, from his boyhood, his great ambition was to be "a correct poet." He worked and worked, polished and polished, until each idea had received at his hands its very neatest and most epigrammatic expression. In the art of condensed, compact, pointed, and yet harmonious and flowing verse, Pope has no equal. But, as a vehicle for poetry-for the love and sympathy with nature and man which every true poet must feel, Pope's verse is artificial; and its style of expression has now died out. It was one of the chief missions of Wordsworth to drive the Popian second-hand vocabulary out of existence.

15. JAMES THOMSON (1700-1748), the poet of The Seasons, was born at Ednam in Roxburghshire, Scotland, in the year 1700. He was educated at the grammar-school of Jedburgh, and then at the University of Edinburgh. It was intended that he should enter the ministry of the Church of Scotland; but, before his college course was finished, he had given up this idea: poetry proved for him too strong a magnet. While yet a young man, he had written his poem of Winter; and, with that in his pocket, he resolved to try his fortune in London. While walking about the streets, looking at the shops, and gazing at the new wonders of the vast metropolis, his pocket was picked of his pocket-handkerchief and his letters of introduction; and he found himself alone in London-thrown entirely on his own resources. A publisher was, however, in time found for Winter; and the poem slowly rose into appreciation and popularity. This was in 1726. Next year, Summer; two years after, Spring appeared; while Autumn, in 1730, completed the Seasons. The Castle of Indolence—a poem in the Spenserian stanza-appeared in 1748. In the same year he was appointed Surveyor-General of the Leeward Islands, though he never visited the scene of his duty, but had his work done by deputy. He died at Kew in the year 1748.

16. Thomson's place as a poet is high in the second rank. His Seasons have always been popular; and, when Coleridge found a well-thumbed and thickly dog's-eared copy lying on the window-sill of a country inn, he exclaimed "This is true fame!" His Castle of Indolence is, however, a finer piece of poetical work than any of his other writings. The first canto is the best. But the Seasons have been much more widely read; and a modern critic says: "No poet has given the special pleasure which poetry is capable of giving to so large a number of persons in so large a measure as Thomson.” Thomson is very unequal in his style. Sometimes he rises to a great height of inspired expression; at other times he sinks to a dull dead level of pedestrian prose. His power of describing scenery is often very remarkable. Professor Craik says: "There is no other poet who surrounds us with so much of the truth of nature;" and he calls the Castle of Indolence "one of the gems of the language."

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17. THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771), the greatest elegiac poet of the century, was born in London in 1716. His father was a moneyscrivener," as it was called; in other words, he was a stockbroker. His mother's brother was an assistant - master at Eton; and at Eton, under the care of this uncle, Gray was brought up. One of his schoolfellows was the famous Horace Walpole. After leaving school, Gray proceeded to Cambridge; but, instead of reading mathematics, he studied classical literature, history, and modern languages, and never took his degree. After some years spent at Cambridge, he entered himself of the Inner Temple; but he never gave much time to the study of law. His father died in 1741; and Gray, soon after, gave up the law and went to live entirely at Cambridge. The first published of his poems was the Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. The Elegy written in a Country Churchyard was handed about in manuscript before its publication in 1750; and it made his reputation at once. In 1755 the Progress of Poesy was published; and the ode entitled The Bard was begun. In 1768 he was appointed Professor of Modern History at Cambridge; but, though he studied hard, he never lectured. He died at Cambridge, at the age of fifty-four, in the year 1771. Gray was never married. He was said by those who knew him to be the most learned man of his time in Europe. Literature, history, and several sciences-all were thoroughly known to him. He had read everything in the world that was best worth reading; while his knowledge of botany, zoology, and entomology was both wide and exact.

18. Gray's Elegy took him seven years to write; it contains thirtytwo stanzas; and Mr Palgrave says "they are perhaps the noblest stanzas in the language." General Wolfe, when sailing down to attack Quebec, recited the Elegy to his officers, and declared, "Now, gentlemen, I would rather be the author of that poem than take Quebec." Lord Byron called the Elegy "the corner-stone of Gray's poetry." Gray ranks with Milton as the most finished workman in English verse; and certainly he spared no pains. Gray said himself that "the style he aimed at was extreme conciseness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical;" and this style, at which he aimed, he succeeded fully in achieving. One of the finest stanzas in the whole Elegy is the last, which the writer omitted in all the later editions :—

"There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,

By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The red-breast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground."

19. WILLIAM COLLINS (1721-1759), one of the truest lyrical poets of the century, was born at Chichester on Christmas-day, 1721. He was educated at Winchester School; afterwards at Queen's, and also at Magdalen College, Oxford. Before he left school he had written a set of poems called Persian Eclogues. He left the university with a reputation for ability and for indolence; went to London "with many projects in his head and little money in his pocket;" and there found a kind and fast friend in Dr Johnson. His Odes appeared in 1747. The volume fell stillborn from the press: not a single copy was sold; no one bought, read, or noticed it. In a fit of furious despair, the unhappy author called in the whole edition and burnt every copy with his own hands. And yet it was, with the single exception of the songs of Burns, the truest poetry that had appeared in the whole of the eighteenth century. A great critic says: In the little book there was hardly a single false note: there was, above all things, a purity of music, a clarity of style, to which I know of no parallel in English verse from the death of Andrew Marvell to the birth of William Blake." Soon after this great disappointment he went to live at Richmond, where he formed a friendship with Thomson and other poets. In 1749 he wrote the Ode on the Death of Thomson, beginning

"In yonder grave a Druid lies "

one of the finest of his poems.

Not long after, he was attacked by a

disease of the brain, from which he suffered, at intervals, during the remainder of his short life. He died at Chichester in 1759, at the

age of thirty-eight.

20. Collins's best poem is the Ode to Evening; his most elaborate, the Ode on the Passions; and his best known, the Ode beginning

"How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blessed!"

"His range of

...

His latest and best critic says of his poems : flight was perhaps the narrowest, but assuredly the highest, of his generation. He could not be taught singing like a finch, but he struck straight upward for the sun like a lark. . . . The direct sincerity and purity of their positive and straightforward inspiration will always keep his poems fresh and sweet in the senses of all men. He was a solitary song-bird among many more or less excellent pipers and pianists. He could put more spirit of colour into a single stroke, more breath of music into a single note, than could all the rest of his generation into all the labours of their lives."