This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That every labouring sinew strains,
Those in the deeper vitals rage.
Lo! Poverty! to fill the band,

That numbs the soul with icy hand,
And slow-consuming Age."

Whether we read the 'Hymn to Adversity,' or 'The Progress of Poesy,' we note the same difference. The allusions to external nature are either conventional or artificial; the references to the passions of man are just, profound, and even novel. "Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate," is the burden of almost every strain; yet the conclusion is stated neither in a rebellious spirit nor in utter sadness. The spirit of the poetry of which we are speaking is a pensive spirit, but not gloomily pensive. It can scarcely even be called melancholy. Sometimes even the pensiveness is cheerful, as Old Age so often is.

But how different is its cheerfulness from the cheerfulness of Youth! The fruit of the tree has been tasted; all is known. Yet it has left no bitter taste in the mouth. We are far from the confiding Childhood of Chaucer, from the noble hopefulness of Youth, as seen in Spenser ; but we are equally removed from the "perfect Timon not nineteen which another Cycle yet to come will show us in more than one of its poets. Indeed this Old Age of the first Cycle of English Song, though deeply impressed with the vanity of human life, is not indisposed to be satisfied, in its way. At least it is resigned, after the fashion of mature years, if it is not quite content. Open the 'Minstrel' of Beattie, and whilst observing in it, as in Pope and Gray, a want of warm, or at least of intense, sympathy with external nature, we shall meet with this philosophic temperament, which is always more or less willing to take things as they are, and frequently inclined to hope that they are better than they really seem:

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Shall he whose birth, maturity, and age,
Scarce fill the circle of one summer day-
Shall the poor gnat with discontent and rage
Exclaim that Nature hastens to decay

If but a cloud obstruct the solar ray,

If but a momentary shower descend?

Or shall frail man Heaven's dread decree gainsay
Which bade the series of events extend,

Wide through unnumbered worlds, and ages without end?

One part, one little part, we dimly scan

Through the dark medium of life's feverish dream,
Yet dare arraign the whole stupendous plan,

If but that little part incongruous seem.
Nor is that part perhaps what mortals deem;
Oft from apparent ills our blessings rise.
O, then renounce that impious self-esteem
That aims to trace the secrets of the skies!
For thou art but of dust. Be humble and be wise."

We quote this, not for its excellence as poetry, though it is not without much merit, but as illustrative of the general temper of the poetry of the period in which it was written. But every age produces some one work which reflects its every form and feature; and in Pope's magnificent poem, the Essay on Man,' we find embodied all that is really characteristic of the epoch of which we are treating. The Essay on Man' is one of the few works for which we can safely prophesy immortality; for, over and above the genius with which it is loaded, it is a typical poem, and human curiosity would keep it alive even if human admiration did not do so. Every lettered Englishman knows pages of it by heart, and will ever continue to prize it. It alone would serve to point the moral we are drawing. It is the poem of wise, serene, philosophical Old Age, which the boy of twelve can read with pleasure, the youth of eighteen with delight, the man of forty with admiration, but probably he of sixty alone with full comprehension. Our mind ripens to the perfect appreciation of it all through life. Fancy, imagination, wit, humour, epigram, argument, illustration, all meet in its grandly marshalled lines and well-balanced parts; and its conclusion is neither more nor less noble than all the rest:

"Come thou, my friend, my genius! Come along,
O master of the poet and the song.

And while the Muse now stoops or now ascends,
To man's low passions, or their glorious ends,
Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise,
To fall with dignity, with temper rise;
Formed by thy converse, happily to steer
From grave to gay, from lively to severe,
Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease,
Intent to reason or polite to please.
Oh! while along the stream of time thy name
Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame,

Say, shall my little bark attendant sail,

Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale?
When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose,

Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes,

Shall then this age to future age pretend

Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend?
That, urged by thee, I turned the tuneful art
From sound to things, from fancy to the heart;
For wit's false mirror held up nature's light,
Showed erring pride whatever is is right;
That reason, passion, answer one great aim;
That true self-love and social are the same;
That virtue only makes our bliss below,
And all our knowledge is, ourselves to know."

Does language contain a finer passage than that? It does if, narrow in our sympathies, nothing but the simplicity of Childhood, nothing but the ardour of Youth, nothing but the stormy strength of Manhood,

satisfies us. But if we be truly comprehensive and catholic in our taste, and from every age we wish to cull dispassionately the noble fruit it has borne, we must say that the whole range of literature can show nothing more satisfactory. There is only one word that expresses its merit. It is thoroughly adequate. We may, personally, prefer one period to another; but the fundamental point to be considered is, Was any one particular period worthy of itself? And any one who can read over Pope, alone-to say nothing of the poets who were virtually his contemporaries, from the accession of Anne down to the French Revolution-without reaching the conclusion that the Old Age of our Cycle of English Song was worthy both of its dawn and of its prime, and that Pope is the worthy successor of Spenser and of Shakespeare, may without presumption be pronounced as deficient in all critical insight.

It is not our business to dwell on the faults into which the poetry of which we are treating continually falls. It is enough to say that, taken in its entirety, it contains pages, in fact volumes, that are worthless from their tameness. One falls on the side on which one leans. The poetry that is determined to be "correct with spirit, eloquent with ease," will be sure very often to be correct without spirit and easy without being eloquent. To every conceivable style of poetry is attached some peculiar danger; and there are none who do not tumble into the pitfall sometimes. Chaucer's simplicity not unoften meanders into childish prattle; Spenser's dignity sometimes ends by being wearisome; Shakespeare's vaulting ambition sometimes o'erleaps itself, and he tumbles into sheer bombast; Milton occasionally forgets to be anything but stilted. In the same way, the poets of the Old Age of the Cycle continually wax prosy, and put into verse what we need not even be troubled with in prose.

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What is the world itself? A grave!

Where is the dust that has not been alive?
The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors;
From human mould we reap our daily bread.
The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes,
And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons.
O'er devastation we wild revels keep,
While buried towns support the dancer's heel.
Each element partakes our scattered spoils."

It is impossible to be very grateful for this; and this is from Young's Night Thoughts.' The eighteenth century produced any amount of it. When the Muses take to philosophising there is a danger that almost everybody will think he can enter their halls. The human race is so prone to preaching; and who is there that does not imagine he can "moralise a song?" Alas! it is as difficult as any other form of poetry-as libraries full of failures can testify. Pope

alone did it, on any large scale, to perfection; and it is quite as true to say that there is only one Pope, as that there is only one Shakespeare.

But it would be grievously unfair to part with the poets of the last stage of our Cycle of English Song, without alluding to two other qualities which, along with those we have already extolled, serve to make it a fit companion, in the realms of Fame, with any of its predecessors. We allude to its humoristic fancy, and to its pathos. It is positively humiliating to have to assert, as though it ever had been contradicted-and contradicted and questioned it has been a thousand times-that the Age we write of was remarkable for poetic fancy. We cannot condescend to argue the matter. We will only name The Rape of the Lock' and the Dunciad,' and there leave the matter.

But what sort of fancy was it? Again we have to reply. It was the fancy, the playful, almost compassionate fancy, of Old Age, to which great knowledge and wonderful breadth of view contributed their powers. It is fancy, bred alike both in the heart and in the head, but in the head mostly. It is the fancy that disports with a subject easily, and without spasms, because it is a master. Read.

"But when to mischief mortals bend their will,
How soon they find fit instruments of ill!
Just then, Clarissa drew, with tempting grace,
A two-edged weapon from her shining case;
So ladies, in romance, assist their knight—
Present the spear, and arm him for the fight.
He takes the gift with reverence, and extends
The little engine on his fingers' ends;
This just behind Belinda's neck he spread,
As o'er the fragrant steams she bent her head.
Swift to the lock a thousand sprites repair:
A thousand wings by turn blow back the hair,
And thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear:
Thrice she looked back, and thrice the foe drew near.
Just in that instant, anxious Ariel sought

The close recesses of the virgin's thought;
As, on the nosegay in her breast reclined,
He watched the ideas rising in her mind.
Sudden he viewed, in spite of all her art,
An earthly lover lurking at her heart.
Amazed, confused, he found his power expired,
Resigned to fate, and with a sigh retired.

The peer now spreads the glittering forfex wide
To enclose the lock, now joins it to divide.
E'en then, before the fatal engine closed,
A wretched sylph too fondly interposed;

Fate urged the shears, and cut the sylph in twain,
(But airy substance soon unites again);
The meeting points the sacred hair dissever
From the fair head, for ever and for ever!

Then flashed the livid lightnings from her eyes,
And screams of horror rend the affrighted skies,
Not louder shrieks to pitying Heaven are cast

When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last,
Or when rich china vessels fallen from high,

In glittering dust and painted fragments lie."

No quotation, however, and no amount of encomium, can do justice to The Rape of the Lock.' The only way to do it justice is to read it. Having done so, we can scarcely escape the conclusion that it must be assigned the same place in the poetry of the Old Age of this Cycle of English Song that is occupied in the period of Early Manhood by 'The Tempest' and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.'

Indeed, it would be quite possible to illustrate every side of the poetry of this epoch by quotations from Pope; but it would not be fair to others, and moreover, in illustrating its pathos, perfectly as 'The Epistle of Heloise to Abelard,' would answer our purpose, there happen to be two other poems yet more apt, and which will introduce us to a name dearly cherished by the English people. The Deserted

Village' and 'The Traveller,' full as they are of the finest pathos and emotion, yet withal utterly free from passion, serve best to represent that pensive and pathetic spirit of which we spoke as proper to Old Age.

"Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,

Or by the lazy Scheldt or wandering Po,

Or onwards where the rude Carinthian boor
'Against the houseless stranger shuts the door,
Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies,
A weary waste expanding to the skies:
Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see,
My heart, untravelled, fondly turns to thee,
Still to my burthen turns, with ceaseless pain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain."

Such lines, though dictated by the spirit of placid Old Age, themselves never grow old. They are the perfection of well-expressed natural sentiment. Never in Goldsmith's poetry do you meet with those "cracks" which spring from the theme being overstrained. All is well-balanced, harmonious, conclusive, soothing, and sufficient. Trick there is none, no effort, no aiming at effect, no false lights and shadows. "The Deserted Village' flows along like a stream that has no shallows, no rapids. It keeps the even tenor of its way. It is like the talk of some old man eloquent, who is at a loss neither for thought nor for expression, but who knows to a nicety what he thinks and how another is to be made to understand him. It expresses, as Goldsmith said all poetry should express, "the warmest thoughts in the simplest languge." "O blest retirement! friend to life's decline, Retreat from cares that never must be mine