See heav'n its sparkling portals wide display, And break upon thee in a flood of day ! No more the rising sun shall gild the morn, Nor ev'ning Cynthia fill her silver horn ; But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays, One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze

The only full-length Portrait of Pope Drawn without his knowledge while conversing with Mr. Allen at Prior Park

O'erflow thy courts : the Light Himself shall shine Revealed, and God's eternal day be thine ! The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay, Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away ; But fixed His word, His saving power remains ;— Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns !

From The " Elegy On An Unfortunate Lady."

What can atone (oh ever-injured shade !) Thy fate unpitied, and thy rights unpaid ? No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear Pleased thy pale ghost, or graced thy mournful bier. By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed, By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed. By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned, By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned : What though no friends in sable weeds appear, Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year, And bear about the mockery of woe To midnight dances, and the public show ? What though no weeping loves thy ashes grace, Nor polished marble emulate thy face ? What though no sacred earth allow thce room, Nor hallowed dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb ? Yet shall thy grave with rising flow'rs be drest, And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast : There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow, There the first roses of the year shall blow ; While angels with their silver wings o ershade The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.

From "AN Essay On Man."

I.o, the poor Indian ! whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or 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 giv'n, Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav'n ; Some safer world in depths 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.

From "the Dunciad."

In flowed at once a gay embroidered race, And tittering pushed the pedants off the place : Some would have spoken, but the voice was drowned By the French horn, or by the opening hound. The first came forwards, with as easy mien, As if he saw St. James's and the queen. When thus th' attendant orator began, " Receive, great empress ! thy accomplished son : Thine from the birth, and sacred from the rod, A dauntless infant! never scared with God. The sire saw, one by one, his virtues wake : The mother begged the blessmg of a rake.

Thou gavest that ripeness, which so soon began, And ceased so soon, he ne'er was boy, nor man. Through school and college, thy kind cloud o'ercast, Safe and unseen the young /Kneas past : Thence bursting glorious, all at once let down, Stunned with his giddy larum half the town. Intrepid then, o'er seas and lands he flew : Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too. There all thy gifts and graces we display, Thou, only thou, directing all our way !

Title-page from "The Dunciad," 1728

To where the Seine, obsequious as she runs, Pours at great Bourbon's feet her silken sons ; Or Tiber, now no longer Roman, rolls, Vain of Italian arts, Italian souls: To happy convents, bosomed deep in vines, \Vhere slumber abbots, purple as their wines : To isles of fragrance, lily-silvered vales, Diffusing languor in the panting gales : To lands of singing, or of dancing slaves, Love-whisp'ring woods, and lute-resounding waves. But chief her shrine where naked Venus keeps, And Cupids ride the lion of the deeps."

From The " Moral Essays."

But all our praises why should lords engross ? Rise, honest muse ! and sing the Man of Ross : Pleased Yaga echoes through her winding bounds, And rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds. \Vho hung with woods yon mountain's sultry brow? From the dry rock who bade the waters flow? Not to the skies in useless columns tost, Or in proud falls magnificently lost, But clear and artless, pouring through the plain Health to the sick, and solace to the swain.

The

DUNCIAD,

V A R I O R V M.

WITH THE

TROLEGOMENA of SCJ(ll£EM'

Whose causeway parts the vale with shady rows? Whose seats the weary traveller repose ? Who taught that heav'n-directed spire to rise ? "The Man of Ross," each lisping babe replies. Behold the market-place with poor o'erspread ! The Man of Ross divides the weekly bread ; He feeds yon alms-house, neat, but void of state, Where Age and Want sit smiling at the gate ; Him portioned maids, apprenticed orphans blest, The young who labour, and the old who rest. Is any sick? the Man of Ross relieves, Prescribes, attends, the med'cine makes, and gives.

Is there a variance ? enter but his door, Balked are the courts, and contest is no more. Despairing quacks with curses fled the place, And vile attorneys, now a useless race.

B. Thrice happy man ! enabled to pursue What all so wish, but want the pow'r to do ! Oh say, what sums that generous hand supply ? What mines, to swell that boundless charity?

P. Of debts, and taxes, wife and children clear, This man possessed—five hundred pounds a year. Blush, grandeur, blush ! proud courts, withdraw your blaze , Ye little stars ! hide your diminished rays.

Matthew

Prior

(1664-1721)

Matthew Prior (1664-1721) was the son of a joiner at Wimborne Minster, in Dorsetshire, where he was born on the 2ist of July 1664. The family moved to London, and the future poet was sent to Westminster School. While he v.-as there, under Dr. Busby, the elder Prior died, leaving his wife so poor that she was obliged to take Matthew away from school. He was put to serve in the bar of the Rhenish Wine-house in Cannon Row, of which his uncle was the proprietor, and there Lord Dorset one day found the boy with a Horace in his hand. He told his fashionable friends, and it became a recognised amusement to go to the wine-shop to hear the vintner's boy read Latin poetry. With Lord Dorset's help he went back to Westminster School; he made friends with the young Montagues, and was much in l!-.e company of the elder of these (Charles, afterwards Lord Halifax). In 1683 Prior