As a poet, however, Pope challenges the highest admiration.  At the age of sixteen he commenced his “Pastorals,” and when only twenty-one published his “Essay on Criticism,” pronounced “the finest piece of argumentative and reasoning poetry in the English language.”  His reputation was now firmly established, and his literary activity ceased only at his death; although, during the latter portion of his life, he was so weak physically that he was unable to dress himself or even to rise from bed without assistance.  Pope’s great admiration was Dryden, whose style he studied and copied.  He lacks the latter’s strength, but in elegance and polish he remains unequaled.

Pope’s most remarkable work is “The Rape of the Lock;” his greatest, the translation into English verse of Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey.”  His “Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard,” “The Dunciad,” and the “Essay On Man” are also famous productions.  He published an edition of “Shakespeare,” which was awaited with great curiosity, and received with equal disappointment.  During the three years following its appearance, he united with Swift and Arbuthnot in writing the “Miscellanies,” an extensive satire on the abuses of learning and the extravagances of philosophy.  His “Epistles,” addressed to various distinguished men, and covering a period of four years, were copied after those of Horace; they were marked by great clearness, neatness of diction, and good sense, and by Pope’s usual elegance and grace.  His “Imitations of Horace” was left unfinished at his death.

The following selection is an extract from the “Essay on Man;” ###

Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise,
By mountains piled on mountains, to the skies? 
Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise. 
Know all the good that individuals find,
Or God and nature meant to mere mankind. 
Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words,—­health, peace, and competence.

But health consists with temperance alone;
And peace, O virtue! peace is all thy own. 
The good or bad the gifts of fortune gain;
But these less taste them as they worse obtain. 
Say, in pursuit of profit or delight,
Who risk the most, that take wrong means or right? 
Of vice or virtue, whether blest or curst,
Which meets contempt, or which compassion first?

Count all th’ advantage prosperous vice attains,
’T is but what virtue flies from and disdains: 
And grant the bad what happiness they would,
One they must want, which is, to pass for good. 
Oh, blind to truth, and God’s whole scheme below,
Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe! 
Who sees and follows that great scheme the best,
Best knows the blessing, and will most be blest.

But fools the good alone unhappy call,
For ills or accidents that chance to all. 
Think we, like some weak prince, the Eternal Cause,
Prone for his favorites to reverse his laws? 
Shall burning AEtna, if a sage requires,
Forget to thunder, and recall her fires? 
When the loose mountain trembles from on high,
Shall gravitation cease, if you go by?