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Dolore doleat, ANNA, non flenti affleat?
Huic 6 quietas intimis penetralibus
Parate sedes; quà (nefas) tot liberûm
Jacent acerbo rapta fato corpora:
Præsertim ubi, usque vere perpetuo virens
Cari GLOVERNI floret urna. Hic ponite:
Hic pænè redeat vivus ossibus calor,
Sensuque tacito pulvis ipse gaudeat.

AD NOBILISSIMUM CAROLUM HALIFAXIE COMITEM.*

• CAROLE, si tibi adhuc collegi cura vetusti,
Quod tamen assiduè nascitur usque novum ;
Si placuit nostro nitidus jam pumice Flaccus,
Quodque sibi vates dixerat “
usque recens ;
Gratia si veteris tibi pectore vivit amici-
Unam fer multis officiosus opem :

Sume, precor,

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citharam nimiùm nimiùmque tacentem,
Verbaque cum plectro fortia junge gravi.
Effer, age, Heroem, stellantique insere Olympo;
Dirceusque iterum nubila tranet olor.

Nos etenim viles, corvi picæque, poetæ
Vix pennas madida (turpe) levamus humo.'

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ENGLISH VERSES: +

In answer to Titley's Imit. of Horace, Od. III. 2.
"He that would great in science grow,' &c.

Who strives to mount Parnassus' hill,
And thence poetic laurels bring,

Must first acquire due force and skill,

Must fly with swan's or eagle's wing.

• Who, in the early part of his life, had been Fellow of College, Cambridge.

+ These verses were so much admired by Johnson, that he once repeated them from memory. Truth and vigour, in this instance, give a value to poetry, which it would not receive from elegance and fancy.

Who Nature's treasures would explore,
Her mysteries and arcana know,
Must high as lofty Newton soar,
Must stoop as delving Woodward low.
Who studies ancient laws and rites,
Tongues, arts, and arms, and history,
Must drudge like Selden days and nights,
And in the endless labour die.

Who travels in religious jars,

Truth mix'd with error, shade with rays,
Like Whiston wanting pyx or stars,
In ocean wide or sinks or strays.

But grant, our hero's hope long toil
And comprehensive genius crown—
All sciences, all arts his spoil-

Yet what reward, or what renown?

Envy, innate in vulgar souls,

Envy steps in, and stops his rise; Envy with poison'd tarnish fouls His lustre, and his worth decries.

He lives inglorious, or in want,

To college and old books confined:
Instead of learn'd he's call'd pedant;
Dunces advanced, he's left behind-

Yet left content, a genuine Stoic he,
Great without patron, rich without South Sea.

415

ALEXANDER POPE.

[1688-1744.]

ALEXANDER POPE, the Poet of Reason' and the Prince of Rhyme,' was born in London June 8, 1688. For an account of his family, we are indebted to the satires written against him, which drew from him in answer the following short genealogy:

Alexander Pope, his father, was of a gentleman's family in Oxfordshire; the head of which was the Earl of Downe in Ireland, whose sole heiress married the Earl of Lindsey. His mother was Editha, the daughter of William Turner, Esq. of York. She had three brothers; one of whom was killed, another died in the service of King Charles I., and the eldest following his fortune, and becoming a general officer in Spain, left her what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family, which (as well as that of her husband) was of the Romish religion.

He was taught to read at a very early age by an aunt, and he acquired for himself the art of writing, by copying printed books with great exactness. At eight years of age he was put under the tuition of one Taverner, a Roman Catholic priest, who in

structed him in the rudiments of the Latin and Greek tongues. These elements of classical literature he imbibed with the utmost facility, and on first seeing the poets he discovered at once both the peculiar bent of his inclination, and the excellency of his genius.

About this time, accidentally meeting with Ogilby's translation of Homer, he was so much struck with the force of the story that, notwithstanding the insipidity of the versification, it became his favourite book. The Ovid of Sandys fell next in his way; and it is said, that from the delight these poor versions gave him, he spoke of the latter in particular with pleasure and praise all his life afterward.'

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From his private tutor he was sent to a Popish seminary at Twyford near Winchester, whence he was removed to a school at Hyde Park Corner.

He was now about ten years old, and being carried sometimes to the play-house, was induced by the sight of theatrical representations to work the chief events of Homer into a kind of play, made up of a number of speeches from Ogilby's translation connected by verses of his own. This piece he persuaded the upper boys to act; the master's gardener representing the character of Ajax, and the whole company attiring themselves after the prints of his favourite author.

In the mean time, he was so unfortunate as to lose, under his two last teachers, what he had acquired from the first. In this condition, at twelve years of age, he retired with his parents to Binfield in Windsor Forest, where his father had provided a convenient residence; and was there put, it is said, under another priest for a few months, but with little

advantage: upon which, he resolved to become his own master. This country-retreat suited his melancholy and reflective temper; and he now wrote the "Ode on Solitude,' his first-printed poem, of which the principal characteristics are correct versification and neat expression. Here, too, he sat down to peruse the writings of Waller, Spenser, and Dryden; but on the first view of Dryden he abandoned the rest, and was never easy, indeed, till he had persuaded a friend to take him to a coffee-house frequented by that illustrious author.* His works he placed before his eyes, as a model; and copying not only his har'monious numbers but even the very turns of his periods, was eventually enabled to give a peculiar sweetness and harmony to English rhyme, which it would indeed be idle to expect to see surpassed.

His poetical reading was always accompanied with attempts at imitation, or translation. In the latter, he quickly attained singular eminence; his versions of the first book of the Thebais of Statius, and of the epistle of Sappho to Phaon, and Dryope and Pomona from Ovid made at the age of fourteen, are unrivalled. His primary object was, undoubtedly, to be a poet; and with this his father accidentally concurred, by obliging him frequently to revise his performances; after which he would say, "These are good rhymes."

66

* This must have been not long before Dryden's death, which happened in 1701; so that Pope was personally unknown to him, a misfortune which he laments in the pathetic words, Virgilium tantùm vidi." He never mentioned him afterward, without a kind of rapturous veneration. Who does not wish, that Dryden could have known the value of the homage thus paid to him?

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