The Knave of Diamonds tries his wily arts,
And wins (oh shameful chance!) the Queen of Hearts.
At this the blood the virgin's cheek forsook,
A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look ;
She sees and trembles at the approaching ill,
Just in the jaws of ruin and codille.
And now (as oft in some distempered state)
On one nice trick depends the general fate :
An Ace of Hearts steps forth the King unseen
Lurked in her hand, and mourned his captive Queen :
He springs to vengeance with an eager pace,
And falls like thunder on the prostrate Ace.
The nymph, exulting, fills with shouts the sky;
The walls, and woods, and long canals reply."

In fine contrast to this pure epic style is the inimitably ludicrous speech of Sir Plume, which gave so much offence to the original of that character :

"She said; then raging to Sir Plume repairs,
And bids her beau demand the precious hairs:
(Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain,
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane)
With earnest eyes and round unthinking face,
He first the snuff-box opened, then the case,

And thus broke out- My Lord, why, what the devil!
Zounds! damn the lock! 'fore Gad, you must be civil!
Plague on't! 'tis past a jest-nay prithee, pox!
Give her the hair'-he spoke, and rapped his box."

Even masterpieces have their weak points; and the weakest point in the Rape of the Lock' is obviously the battle between the men and the ladies. It seems impossible in a mock-heroic poem to dispense with a combat of some kind, yet scarcely one poem of this class has mastered the difficulty which the necessity creates. The battle must be either real as in La Secchia Rapita,' in which case the poet departs from the true genius of burlesque, or else it must be invented, when it becomes infinitely difficult to discover comic details appropriate to the situation. Boileau has, perhaps, on the whole been most successful in this respect. The battle in 'Le Lutrin' is occasioned naturally by the meeting of the rival parties, and a kind of propriety is given to the weapons

VOL. V.

I

used, by the proximity of a well-known bookseller's shop, which thus enables the poet to indulge in satirical side-strokes at contemporary poets. A structure so airy and delicate as the 'Rape of the Lock' could not have borne anything so brutal as real blows and wounds. Pope, therefore, is reduced to represent a kind of allegorical fight, in which the pleasantry is eked out, as far as may be, by puns, and double meanings. On this episode Dennis makes some of the few unanswerable criticisms in his 'Remarks.' Among other observations he

says:

"In the beginning of the next page the following lines are full of miserable pleasantry :

"While through the press enraged Thalestris flies,

And scatters death around from both her eyes,

A beau and witling perished in the throng,
One died in metaphor, and one in song,
O cruel Nymph! a living death I bear,
Cried Dapperwit, and sunk beneath the chair.

A mournful glance, Sir Fopling upwards cast,
Those eyes were made so killing !—was his last.

"So that here we have a real combat and a metaphorical dying Now is not that, sir, very ludicrous?"

To this it can only be replied in the words of Johnson: "These are perhaps faults; but what are such faults to so much excellence?" The Rape of the Lock' is a triumphant illustration of the justice of the principles advocated in the 'Essay on Criticism.' In every line of the poem we feel the truth of the maxim, True wit is nature to advantage dressed.' Nature-the action, the manners, the characters of modern life-is always before the reader. On the other hand, the form in which Nature is presented is conceived in strict accordance with the rules of classical antiquity. Yet there is nothing slavish in the imitation: good sense regulates throughout the conduct of the action. In his machinery Pope is neither driven like Tassoni to employ obsolete Pagan mythology, nor like Boileau to resort to moral abstractions; by a supreme effort of invention he has made his supernatural agents credible to the modern imagination. Hence he has

successfully encountered all those difficulties in the way of the mock-heroic poet on which I have dwelt in the foregoing pages. A slight incident of social life has been made the basis of a well-connected epic narrative; the sayings and doings of persons belonging to existing society are invested with heroic dignity; the whole delicate creation breathes a justly diffused moral air, which saves it from the reproach of triviality, without making it obtrusively didactic. Pope has succeeded in embalming a fleeting episode of fashionable manners in a form which can perish only with the English language.

CHAPTER VI.

LIFE IN LONDON AND AT CHISWICK AFTER THE

REVOLUTION OF 1714.

Changes produced by the Death of Queen Anne-Pope's first visit to Bath-His 'Farewell to London'-Removal to Chiswick-Quarrels with Curll and Cibber.

1714-1717.

THE 'Rape of the Lock' reflects in its gaiety and good humour the comparatively peaceful condition of English society during the reign of Queen Anne. Everything then seemed to conspire to bring about that balance in political affairs without which party conflict inevitably degenerates into faction. The Tories had little reason to be dissatisfied with the situation. A monarch of the House of Stuart was on the throne: the Church was in safety: since the Queen's accession the party had exercised a powerful influence on public opinion, and during the last four years of her life they were in the possession of official power. Nor were the Whigs inclined to complain. The Revolution of 1688, though acquiesced in by the Tories, had been mainly the work of their rivals, who, knowing that the fruits of their labours had been secured by the Act of Settlement, could look forward with something like equanimity to the speedy recovery of power and place. Men of both parties combined, as we have seen, to celebrate the Peace of Utrecht, and to applaud the performance of 'Cato;' their names appeared side by side in the Miscellanies of the day; and they met harmoniously in the Clubs on the neutral ground of taste and literature. This fortunate equilibrium was destroyed, and the complexion of current English literature completely altered, by the accession of the House of Hanover in 1714,

The Queen died on the 1st of August in that year. One of the first consequences of the event in the world of letters was the dissolution of the Scriblerus Club, which, founded like Button's upon a literary-political basis, naturally collapsed when, of its important members, Oxford was sent to the Tower, Bolingbroke fled to France, and Swift retired to Ireland. On the other side many of the most prominent literary Whigs, and among them Addison and Steele, were summoned by the new Government from the discussion of questions of taste and literature to take part in the political conflict. The society at Button's consequently rapidly declined, and the proprietor of the coffee-house fell into such poverty that, when he died in 1719, he had to be buried at the expense of the parish. An inflamed feeling of bitterness and suspicion, spreading on all sides, interrupted the friendly intercourse between political opponents, and Pope found himself deprived of the company of all his old Club associates but Jervas, Gay, and Arbuthnot, the last of whom had now lost the emoluments he enjoyed during the reign of Anne as court physician. "This town," writes the poet to Caryll, in November or December, 1715, "is in so prodigious a ferment of politics, that I, who never meddled with any, am absolutely incapable of all conversation in it." Fortunately for him the subscription for his Translation of the Iliad had been completed before the death of the Queen. Henceforth, for many years, his history is confined to a steady progress towards the goal of his ambition, fame and independence, and to the quarrels in which he became involved on the road.

Personally he was but little affected by the political revolution. He came from Binfield and his translation to observe the course of events. "I could not but take a trip to London," he says to Caryll on August 16th, 1714, "on the death of the Queen, moved by the common curiosity of mankind, who leave their business to be looking on other men's." He tells his friend that he expects under the Act of Parliament which prevented Roman Catholics from keeping a horse of the value