* * * * *

Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare. 
And beauty draws us by a single hair.

Surrounding sylphs protect the beauty; and one to whom the lock has been given in charge, flutters unfortunately too near, and is clipped in two by the scissors that cut the lock.  It is a rather extravagant conclusion, even in a mock-heroic poem, that when the strife was greatest to restore the lock, it flew upward: 

    A sudden star, it shot through liquid air,
    And drew behind a radiant trail of hair,

and thus, and always, it

    Adds new glory to the shining sphere.

With these simple and meagre materials, Pope has constructed an harmonious poem in which the sylphs, gnomes, and other sprites of the Rosicrucian philosophy find appropriate place and service.  It failed in its principal purpose of reconciliation, but it has given us the best mock-heroic poem in the language.  As might have been expected, it called forth bitter criticisms from Dennis; and there were not wanting those who saw in it a political significance.  Pope’s pleasantry was aroused at this, and he published A Key to the Lock, in which he further mystifies these sage readers:  Belinda becomes Great Britain; the Baron is the Earl of Oxford; and Thalestris is the Duchess of Marlborough.

THE MESSIAH.—­In 1712 there appeared in one of the numbers of The Spectator, his Messiah, a Sacred Eclogue, written with the purpose of harmonizing the prophecy of Isaiah and the singular oracles of the Pollio, or Fourth Eclogue of Virgil.  Elevated in thought and grand in diction, the Messiah has kept its hold upon public favor ever since, and portions of it are used as hymns in general worship.  Among these will be recognized that of which the opening lines are: 

    Rise, crowned with light, imperial Salem, rise;
    Exalt thy towering head and lift thine eyes.

In 1713 he published a poem on Windsor Forest, and an Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day, in imitation of Dryden.  He also furnished the beautiful prologue to Addison’s Cato.

TRANSLATION OF THE ILIAD.—­He now proposed to himself a task which was to give him more reputation and far greater emolument than anything he had yet accomplished—­a translation of the Iliad of Homer.  This was a great desideratum, and men of all parties conspired to encourage and reward him.  Chapman’s Homer, excellent as it was, was not in a popular measure, and was known only to scholars.

In the execution of this project, Pope labored for six years—­writing by day and dreaming of his work at night; translating thirty or forty lines before rising in the morning, and jotting down portions even while on a journey.  Pope’s polished pentameters, when read, are very unlike the full-voiced hexameters of Homer; but the errors in the translation are comparatively few and unimportant, and his own