POPE.

1688-1744.

ALEXANDER POPE, the most eminent poet of his time, was born in 1688, and died in 1744. He was blessed with a fair share of wealth, and lived in luxurious retirement in his villa at Twickenham. Afflicted with a bodily deformity, touching which he was keenly sensitive, he mingled but little in the great world, but contented himself with the society which sought him in his home. He was emphatically a literary man, giving his whole time and thought to literary pursuits. Notoriously petulant, a peculiarity which his feeble health goes far toward excusing, he was continually involved in quarrels with contemporary writers; and some of his most brilliant poems were written under the inspiration of personal animosity. His greatest work was the translation of Homer, which in most respects remains unsurpassed by any previous or subsequent version. Of his original compositions The Essay on Man is that by which he is best known. From this work we take our extracts.

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF MAN VINDICATED.

HEAVEN from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know,
Or who could suffer being here below ?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
O blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven;
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish or a sparrow fall;

Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Hope humbly, then, with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher, Death; and God adore.
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always TO BE blest;
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo the poor Indian, whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind;

His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;

Yet simple Nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-topped hill, a humbler heaven ;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,

Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
TO BE, contents his natural desire,

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire:
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense
Weigh thy opinion against Providence ;
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,
Say, here he gives too little, there too much :
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet cry, if Man's unhappy, God's unjust;
If man alone engross not Heaven's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there :
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his justice, be the God of God.
In Pride, in reasoning Pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,
Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods.
Aspiring to be Gods, if Angels fell,
Aspiring to be Angels, Men rebel :
And who but wishes to revert the laws
Of Order sins against the Eternal Cause.

GREATNESS.

HONOR and shame from no condition rise;

Act well your part, there all the honor lies.

Fortune in men has some small difference made :

One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;
The cobbler aproned, and the parson gowned,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned.

"What differ more (you cry) than crown and cowl?"
I'll tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool.
You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,
Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;
The rest is all but leather or prunella.

Go! if your ancient but ignoble blood

Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood.
Go! and pretend your family is young,

Nor own your fathers have been fools so long.
What can ennoble sots or slaves or cowards?

Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.

Look next on greatness! say where greatness lies?
'Where, but among the heroes and the wise?
Heroes are much the same, the point's agreed,
From Macedonia's madman to the Swede; *
The whole strange purpose of their lives, to find
Or make an enemy of all mankind!

Not one looks backward, onward still he goes,
Yet ne'er looks forward farther than his nose.
No less alike the politic and wise;

All sly slow things, with circumspective eyes :
Men in their loose unguarded hours they take,
Not that themselves are wise, but others weak.
But grant that those can conquer, these can cheat;
'Tis phrase absurd to call a villain great:

Who wickedly is wise, or madly brave,
Is but the more a fool, the more a knave.
Who noble ends by noble means obtains,
Or, failing, smiles in exile or in chains,
Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed
Like Socrates, that man is great indeed.

* The allusion is to Alexander the Great and Charles XII. of Sweden. Pope borrowed the idea from Mandeville's Fable of the Bees.

2

DR. JOHNSON.

1709-1784.

SAMUEL JOHNSON, one of the great literary men of his time, was born in 1709 and died in 1784. He compiled a celebrated Dictionary of the English Language and wrote poems, moral and controversial, essays and biographies, including the well-known Lives of the Poets. He was the contemporary of Goldsmith, Burke, Sheridan, and many famous literary men and women, among whom he enjoyed a sort of pre-eminence, yielded rather to his arrogance than to his merits. His manners were incredibly rude, and his general demeanor positively bearish, but his intellectual greatness is beyond question. His prose writings are noted for their formality of style and vigor of thought. Like Addison, he has furnished an adjective descriptive of literary style; and to be "Johnsonian" is to be ponderous and grandiose. Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, an allegorical story from which we take our extracts, is perhaps the most familiar of his compositions to the general reader. Dr. Johnson was a man of vigorous intellect, acute and argumentative, but narrow in his views, dogmatic and positive in his assertions. He was respected, but not loved. His biography, written by his humble friend Boswell, gives a full and vivid portrait of him as a man and a writer.

A PALACE IN A VALLEY.

YE who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty emperor in whose dominions the Father of Waters begins his course; whose bounty pours down the streams of plenty, and scatters over half the world the harvests of Egypt.

According to the custom which has descended from age to age among the monarchs of the torrid zone, Rasselas was confined in a private palace, with the other sons and daughters of Abyssinian royalty, till the order of succession should call him to the throne.

The place which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had destined for the residence of the Abyssinian princes was a spacious valley in the kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on every side by mountains, of which the summits overhang the middle part. The only passage by which it could be entered was a cavern that passed under a rock, of which it has long been disputed whether it was the work of nature or of human industry. The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and the mouth which opened into the valley was closed with gates of iron, forged by the artificers of ancient days, so massy that no man could without the help of engines open or shut them.

From the mountains on every side rivulets descended that filled all the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the middle inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every fowl whom Nature has taught to dip the wing in water. This lake discharged its superfluities by a stream which entered a dark cleft of the mountain on the northern side, and fell with dreadful noise from precipice to precipice till it was heard no more.

The sides of the mountains were covered with trees, the banks of the brooks were diversified with flowers; every blast shook spices from the rocks, and every month dropped fruits upon the ground. All animals that bite the grass, or browse the shrub, whether wild or tame, wandered in this extensive circuit, secured from beasts of prey by the mountains which confined them. On one part were flocks and herds feeding in the pastures, on another, all beasts of chase frisking in the lawns; the sprightly kid was bounding on the rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking among the trees, and the solemn elephant reposing in the shade. All the diversities of the world were brought together, the blessings of nature were collected, and its evils extracted and excluded.

The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with the necessaries of life; and all delights and superfluities were added at the annual visit which the emperor paid his children, when the iron gate was opened to the sound of music; and during eight days every one that resided in the valley was required to propose whatever might contribute to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up the vacancies of attention, and lessen the tediousness of time. Every desire was immediately granted. All the artificers of pleasure were called to gladden the festivity; the musicians exerted the power of harmony, and the dancers showed their activity before the princes, in hope that they should pass their lives in this blissful captivity, to which those only were admitted whose performance was thought able to add novelty to luxury. Such was the appearance of security and delight which this retirement afforded, that they to whom it was new always desired that it might be perpetual; and as those on whom the iron gate had once closed were never suffered to return, the effect of long experience could not be known. Thus every year produced new schemes of delight, and new competitors for imprisonment.

The palace stood on an eminence raised about thirty paces above