sun, her eyes the gazers strike;
      And like the sun, they shine on all alike. 
      Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
      Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide: 
      If to her share some female errors fall,
      Look on her face, and you’ll forget ’em all.

        This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,
      Nourish’d two locks, which graceful hung behind
      In equal curls, and well conspir’d to deck
      With shining ringlets the smooth iv’ry neck.”

The following is the introduction to the account of Belinda’s assault upon the baron bold, who had dissevered one of these locks “from her fair head for ever and for ever.”

        “Now meet thy fate, incens’d Belinda cry’d,
      And drew a deadly bodkin from her side. 
      (The same his ancient personage to deck,
      Her great, great grandsire wore about his neck,
      In three seal-rings; which after, melted down,
      Form’d a vast buckle for his widow’s gown: 
      Her infant grandame’s whistle next it grew,
      The bells she jingled, and the whistle blew;
      Then in a bodkin grac’d her mother’s hairs,
      Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears).”

I do not know how far Pope was indebted for the original idea, or the delightful execution of this poem, to the Lutrin of Boileau.

The Rape of the Lock is a double-refined essence of wit and fancy, as the Essay on Criticism is of wit and sense.  The quantity of thought and observation in this work, for so young a man as Pope was when he wrote it, is wonderful:  unless we adopt the supposition, that most men of genius spend the rest of their lives in teaching others what they themselves have learned under twenty.  The conciseness and felicity of the expression are equally remarkable.  Thus in reasoning on the variety of men’s opinion, he says—­

      " ’Tis with our judgments, as our watches; none
      Go just alike, yet each believes his own.”

Nothing can be more original and happy than the general remarks and illustrations in the Essay; the critical rules laid down are too much those of a school, and of a confined one.  There is one passage in the Essay on Criticism in which the author speaks with that eloquent enthusiasm of the fame of ancient writers, which those will always feel who have themselves any hope or chance of immortality.  I have quoted the passage elsewhere, but I will repeat it here.

      “Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,
      Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;
      Secure from flames, from envy’s fiercer rage,
      Destructive war, and all-involving age. 
      Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days,
      Immortal heirs of universal praise! 
      Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
      As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow.”