280

SPECIMEN OF POPE'S VERSE.

Pope's Letters, first published, as he tried to make the world believe, against his will, are well worth the reading; but his finest piece of prose is the Preface to his edition of Shakspere. Two of his well-known works have not yet been named-Windsor Forest and the Dying Christian to his Soul. The former, bright with hues caught in woodland rambles, presents glowing pictures of the scenery and sports which he had witnessed in the green glades of Windsor during the days of his dreamy, studious boyhood. The latter, perhaps the feeblest effort of his great pen, is a stiff and puerile rendering of the Emperor Adrian's last trembling sigh.

FROM "THE RAPE OF THE LOCK."

For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crowned,
The berries crackle, and the mill turns round:
On shining altars of Japan they raise
The silver lamp; the fiery spirits blaze:
From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,
While China's earth receives the smoking tide;
At once they gratify their scent and taste,
And frequent cups prolong the rich repast.
Straight hover round the fair her airy band:
Some, as she sipped, the fuming liquor fanned;
Some o'er her lap their careful plumes displayed,
Trembling and conscious of the rich brocade.
Coffee (which makes the politician wise,

And see through all things with his half-shut eyes)
Sent up in vapours to the baron's brain

New stratagems the radiant lock to gain.

Ah! cease, rash youth; desist ere 'tis too late;
Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla's fate!
Changed to a bird, and sent to flit in air,
She dearly paid for Nisus' injured hair!

But when to mischief mortals bend their will,
How soon they find fit instruments of ill!
Just then, Clarissa drew, with tempting grace,
A two-edged weapon from her shining case;
So ladies, in romance, assist their knight,
Present the spear, and arm him for the fight.
He takes the gift with reverence, and extends
The little engine on his fingers' ends;
This just behind Belinda's neck he spread,
As o'er the fragrant steams she bent her head.

SPECIMEN OF POPE'S VERSE.

Swift to the lock a thousand sprites repair,

A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the hair!
And thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear;
Thrice she looked back, and thrice the foe drew near.
Just in that instant, anxious Ariel sought

The close recesses of the virgin's thought:
As on the nosegay in her breast reclined,
He watched the ideas rising in her mind,
Sudden he viewed, in spite of all her art,
An earthly lover lurking at her heart.
Amazed, confused, he found his power expired,
Resigned to fate, and with a sigh retired.

The peer now spreads the glittering forfex wide
To enclose the lock; now joins it, to divide.
E'en then, before the fatal engine closed,
A wretched Sylph too fondly interposed;

Fate urged the shears, and cut the Sylph in twain
(But airy substance soon unites again),
The meeting points the sacred hair dissever

From the fair head, for ever, and for ever!

281

THE life of the famous Dean Swift is a great tragedy. Through all the acts a dark gigantic genius moves, an intellectual Saul, towering by head and shoulders above his fellows, and possessed of an evil spirit, which does not quite abandon its wretched prey even when a pall of darkness settles on his ruined mind, and that dreadful silence of three years begins to unfold itself between a lurid life and the slumber of the narrow grave.

Swift was a Dublin man by birth, being born there in Hoey's Court in 1667. But his parents and his ancestors were English. His father, a mere bird of passage in Dublin, where he had come in the hope of getting some practice as a lawyer, died seven months before Jonathan's birth. At his uncle's expense he went to Kilkenny School, and then to Trinity College, Dublin; but in neither did he distinguish himself above the average run of students. Indeed, his degree of B.A. was of the lowest class, a narrow escape from the disgrace of being plucked, which roused him to studious resolves. And to the steady industry of the next seven years he owed almost all the learning he ever had.

Dependence had all this while been burning like an acrid poison into the proud boy's soul. But his lessons in the hard school of adversity were not yet over. His uncle's death in 1688 flung him upon the world, and forced him to seek a shelter at Moor Park in the household of Sir William Temple, with whom his mother was slightly connected. Here for many years Swift continued to cat

SWIFT AT MOOR PARK.

283

bitter bread; waiting and looking out into the dim future for the time when he could break his chains, and smite tenfold for every stripe he had received. Standing mid-way between the elegantly selfish Sir William, who wrote and gardened and quoted the classics, and the liveried sneerers of the servants' hall, poor Swift gnawed at his own heart in disdainful silence, writhing helplessly under the lofty chidings of his Honour, and the vulgar insolence of his Honour's own man. We can well imagine the working of the swarthy features, the deadly concentrated light of the terrible blue eye, and the convulsive starts of the ungainly limbs, as those continual streams of petty scorn and malice trickled on the spirit of the morbidly sensitive youth, who felt them like molten lead, yet could not or dared not take revenge. At Temple's Swift met King William, who, walking in the garden, showed him how the Dutch cut their asparagus, and offered to make him a captain of horse. One cannot help wishing that Swift had accepted the troop. We should not, most probably, have had Gulliver's Travels on our shelves, but the sabreing of French dragoons might have acted as a safety-valve to the poisonous humours which so many years of bondage had generated in his breast; and the red coat would not have burned him to the bone, as the priest's cassock did, scorching him, as the poisoned shirt scorched Hercules, until the wretched man burst into shrieks of foaming rage.

1693

A.D.

In an evil hour Swift, who had already graduated as M.A. at Oxford, crossed to Dublin, took holy orders, and became prebend of Kilroot in Connor at £100 a year. But the life of a country parson was even worse misery to Swift than the wretchedness of Moor Park. Thither, accordingly, he returned, humbling himself in the dust before the great baronet. Then he became involved in his mysterious love-affair with Hester Johnson, daughter of Sir William's housekeeper, better known by Swift's pet name of Stella, whose black curls and loving eyes threw their spells around the lonely Levite.

Let us glance forward along the course of this strange and seemingly unfinished life, over which, from its very beginning, the

Tas life of the famous Dean Swift is a great tragedy. Through all the acts a dark gigantic genius moves, an intellectual Saul, towering by head and shoulders above his fellows, and possessed of an evil spirit, which does not quite abandon its wretched prey even when a pall of darkness settles on his ruined mind, and that dreadful silence of three years begins to unfold itself between a lurid life and the slumber of the narrow grave.

Swift was a Dublin man by birth, being born there in Hoey's Court in 1667. But his parents and his ancestors were English. His father, a mere bird of passage in Dublin, where he had come in the hope of getting some practice as a lawyer, died seven months before Jonathan's birth. At his uncle's expense he went to Kilkenny School, and then to Trinity College, Dublin; but in neither did he distinguish himself above the average run of students. Indeed, his degree of B.A. was of the lowest class, a narrow escape from the disgrace of being plucked, which roused him to studious resolves. And to the steady industry of the next seven years he owed almost all the learning he ever had.

Dependence had all this while been burning like an acrid poison into the proud boy's soul. But his lessons in the hard school of adversity were not yet over. His uncle's death in 1688 flung him upon the world, and forced him to seek a shelter at Moor Park in the household of Sir William Temple, with whom his mother was slightly connected. .Here for many years Swift continu