The young disease that must subdue at length,
Grows with his growth and strengthens with his strength.

What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.

A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod;
An honest man's the noblest work of God.

*

If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shin'd,
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind!

*

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through Nature up to Nature's God.

Formed by thy converse, happily to steer

From grave to gay, from lively to severe.

The books which earned Pope his highest meed of instant praise and profit were his translations from Homer-the very work which time has retired because better translations of Homer have followed it. In this he was helped by Fenton and Broome, who, however, received but a small share of the profits. It had the advantage of the already eminent fame of its translator, and also of having been. looked forward to with interest through all the six years during which Pope had been working on it. Its beauty was in the exquisite diction, phraseology and versification of which Pope was master; its fault was in the fact that Homer

was disguised and lost sight of. Most later translations have had the advantage of freedom from the shackle of rhyme-witness Bryant's majestic rendering into blank verse; and still later, Lang's and Butcher's, which is mere strong-sounding prose; all versification being sacrificed to literalness of interpretation; almost word for word.

Pope's life came to a gently quarrelsome close at Twickenham. His friends were always near by and his enemies a little farther away. To some one who had complimented him on retaining the poetical spirit he answered, “I am fast sinking into prose!" A few weeks before his death he sent copies of his "Epistles" to certain intimates, saying, "I am like Socrates, dispensing morality to my friends on my death-bed." When his doctors remarked on his better appetite, or stronger pulse, or some such favorable aspect of the case he answered: "Here I am, dying of a hundred good symptoms." The end came at last so quietly that the friends at his bedside did not know when he ceased to breathe. The poor misfitted sheath had carried its sharp, bright blade for fifty-six years.

The age of Queen Anne (1702-14) was not a propitious one for poets. Beside Pope, only two rose above mediocrity-Prior and Gay. Of the host of their versewriting contemporaries, but little more than the names is now remembered.

Matthew Prior (1664-1721) was first brought into notice by the Earl of Dorset, himself a poet of whom Macaulay says that his few songs and satires sparkle with wit as splendid as that of Butler. Dorset found young Prior reading Horace for amusement in the "Rummer Tavern," kept by the boy's uncle; and becoming interested in him, sent him to Cambridge, where he graduated with honor. Not long afterward he wrote, in connection with Montague (another titled poet, who afterward became Earl

of Halifax), a satire on Dryden's "Hind and Panther," called "The City Mouse and Country Mouse." His gay verses and ready wit soon brought him into favor at court, and he was appointed by King William III. ambassador to The Hague. On his way thither he visited Versailles and was shown room after room filled with paintings representing the victories of Louis XIV. (It must be remembered that this was during the life-time of that monarch.) Some Frenchman asked him whether King William's palace had any such decorations. "The monuments of my master's actions," said Prior, "are to be seen everywhere except in his own house." The year before William's death he "ratted," as the English call it, to the tories, and so was quiet for some years, being sent as ambassador to France when they again came into power. We give below a few of his stanzas:

Nobles and heralds, by your leave,

Here lies what once was Matthew Prior,

The son of Adam and of Eve;

Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher?-Epitaph on himself

Be to her faults a little blind,
Be to her virtues very kind;

Let all her ways be unconfined

And clap your padlock-on her mind.-Advice to a Husband.

That air and harmony of shape express,

Fine by degrees, and beautifully less.-Henry and Emma.

John Gay (1688-1732), whom Pope has described as being "In wit a man, simplicity a child," was another poet who lived a comfortable, easy life through the kindness and generosity of friends. His serious poems have long since been forgotten; but his sparkling ballads and his "Beggar's Opera" still afford delight to readers. Gay was a good-humored satirist, and gave such offence to the court-party that his "Polly," a sequel to the "Beggar's Opera," was not allowed to be put on the stage; but on

this very account the sale of it was immense, and the author was handsomely paid by his publishers. Of his ballads, "Black-eyed Susan" is the most picturesque and well sustained. His "Fables". - mostly versifications of Æsop's, adapted to modern conditions—are pleasing and rhythmical.

Gay's friends included almost every one who knew him. Pope was strongly attached to him, and the list contains many other well-known names; but since Thackeray delivered his lectures on "The English Humorists," it has been impossible to dissociate from the name of Gay his sentence describing the latter's position under the roof of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, who took care of him for several years before his death. "With these kind, lordly folks Gay lived, and was lapped in cotton, and had his plate of chicken, and his saucer of cream, and frisked, and barked, and wheezed, and grew fat, and so ended."

In the poem of "Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London," Gay gives a description of the London of his day, as valuable as that of Lydgate's "London Lykepenny."

Of the lesser poets of Anne's time, "The Augustan Age of English Literature," Thomas Parnell is remembered chiefly for his poem of "The Hermit." He was an Irishman by birth, entered the Church, lived mostly in London (disliking Ireland as his countryman Swift had done), and was known as a man of learning and agreeable qualities. "The Hermit" is written in heroic couplets, smoothly versified, and is an excellent specimen of the serious poetry of the age. A few lines will show its character:

The pair arrive; the liveried servants wait;

Their lord receives them at the pompous gate;
The table groans with costly piles of food,
And all is more than hospitably good.
Then, led to rest, the day's long toil they drown,
Deep sunk in sleep, and silk, and heaps of down.

A poem called "The Splendid Shilling," by John Phillips, gained its author much reputation. Ambrose Phillips, a friend of Addison, wrote pastorals. Thomas Tickell helped Pope with his translation of Homer, and also wrote poems of his own. Addison wrote some beautiful hymns; also a poem called "The Campaign," in honor of Marlborough's victories; but his fame as essayist eclipses that which he enjoys as poet. Of the poem just mentioned, two lines have become historical. They refer to the Duke:

And pleased the Almighty's order to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.

Of his hymns, that beginning,

The spacious firmament on high,

is grandest in its imagery.

CHAPTER XXVII.

ADDISON AND STEELE.

HE early part of the eighteenth century was not rich in poets, but it produced two essayists such as the world up to that time had never seen— Addison and Steele. These two wrote together, in a literary partnership which was the more remarkable because they were of such different temperaments. Addison was calm, stately, somewhat cold in disposition, gracious and courteous in manner; a man to be admired rather than loved. Steele, on the other hand was warm-hearted, impulsive, reckless, regularly sinning and repenting by turns, loved and pitied, helped and still not despicable; a strange "bundle of contradictions," yet always faithful to Addison. Addison himself was described by Bernard Mandeville (a moralist and essayist of the time), as "a parson in a tie