and among several others a very curious piece, entitled "The Journal of a Mohock." By these instances I find that the intention of my last Tuesday's paper has been mistaken by many of my readers. I did not design so much to expose vice as idleness, and aimed at those persons who pass away their time rather in trifles and impertinence, than in crimes and immoralities. Offences of this latter kind are not to be dallied with, or treated in so ludicrous a manner. In short, my journal only holds up folly to the light, and shews the disagreeableness of such actions as are indifferent in themselves, and blamable only as they proceed from creatures endowed with reason. My following correspondent, who calls herself Clarinda, is such a journalist as I require; she seems by her letter to be placed in a modish state of indifference between vice and virtue, and to be susceptible of either, were there proper pains taken with her. Had her journal been filled with gallantries, or such occurrences as had shown her wholly divested of her natural innocence, notwithstanding it might have been more pleasing to the generality of readers, I should not have published it; but as it is only the picture of a life filled with a fashionable kind of gaiety and laziness, I shall set down five days of it, as I have received it from the hand of my fair correspondent. DEAR MR. SPECTATOR: You having set your readers an exercise in one of your last week's papers, I have performed mine according to your orders, and herewith send it you inclosed. You must know, Mr. Spectator, that I am a maiden lady of a good fortune, who have had several matches offered me for these ten years last past, and have at present warm applications made to me by a very pretty fellow. As I am at my own disposal, I come up to town every winter, and pass my time in it after the manner you will find in the following journal, which I began to write upon the very day after your Spectator upon that subject. TUESDAY NIGHT.-Could not go to sleep till one in the morning for thinking of my journal. WEDNESDAY.-From eight till ten. Drank two dishes of chocolate in bed, and fell asleep after them. From ten to eleven. Eat a slice of bread and butter, drank a dish of bohea, read the Spectator. From eleven to one. At my toilette, tried a new head. Gave orders for Veny to be combed and washed. Mem. I look best in blue. From one till half an hour after two. a couple of fans. Drove to the Change. Cheapened Till four. At dinner. Mem. Mr. Froth passed by in his new liveries. From four to six. Dressed, paid a visit to old Lady Blithe and her sister, having before heard they were gone out of town that day. From six to eleven. diamonds. At Basset. Mem. Never set again upon the ace of THURSDAY.-From eleven at night to eight in the morning. Dreamed that I punted to Mr. Froth. From eight to ten. Chocolate. Read two acts in Aurengzebe a-bed. From ten to eleven. Tea-table. Read the play-bills. Received a letter from Mr. Froth. Mem. Locked it up in my strong box. Rest of the morning. Fontange, the tire-woman, her account of my Lady Blithe's wash. Broke a tooth in my little tortoise-shell comb. Sent Frank to know how my Lady Hectic rested after her monkey's leaping out at window. Looked pale. Fontange tells me my glass is not true. Dressed by three. From three to four. Dinner cold before I sat down. From four to eleven. Saw company. Mr. Froth's opinion of Milton. His account of the Mohocks. His fancy for a pin-cushion. Picture in the lid of his snuff-box. Old Lady Faddle promises me her woman to cut my hair. Lost five guineas at crimp. Twelve o'clock at night. Went to bed. FRIDAY.-Eight in the morning. A-bed. Read over all Mr. Froth's letters. Ten o'clock. Stayed within all day, not at home. From ten to twelve. In conference with my mantua-maker. suit of ribbons. Broke my blue china cup. From twelve to one. Betty Modely's skuttle. One in the afternoon. half a violet leaf in it. work, and read over the From three to four. Sorted a Shut myself up in my chamber. Practised Lady Called for my flowered handkerchief. Worked From four to twelve. Changed my mind, dressed, went abroad, and played at crimp till midnight. Found Mrs. Spitely at home. Conversation: Mrs. Brilliant's necklace false stones. Old Lady Loveday going to be married to a young fellow that is not worth a groat. Miss Prue gone into the country. Tom Townley has red hair. Mem. Mrs. Spitely whispered in my ear that she had something to tell me about Mr. Froth; I am sure it is not true. Between twelve and one. called me Indamora. Dreamed that Mr. Froth lay at my feet, and SATURDAY.-Rose at eight o'clock in the morning. Sat down to my toilette. From eight to nine. Shifted a patch for half an hour before I could determine it. Fixed it above my left eyebrow. From nine to twelve. From twelve to two. Mem. The third air in fully. Drank my tea and dressed. At chapel. A great deal of good company. the new opera. Lady Blithe dressed fright From three to four. Dined. Miss Kitty called upon me to go to the opera before I was risen from table. From dinner to six. Drank tea. to Veny. Turned off a footman for being rude Six o'clock. Went to the opera. ginning of the second act. Bowed to a lady in the Nicolini in the third act. to my chair. I think he squeezed my hand. Eleven at night. Went to bed. Melancholy dreams. I did not see Mr. Froth till the beMr. Froth talked to a gentleman in a black wig. front box. Mr. Froth and his friend clapped Mr. Froth cried out Aucora. Mr. Froth led me Nicolini said he was Mr. Froth. SUNDAY.-Indisposed. Methought Waked by Miss Kitty. Aurengzebe lay upon the chair by me. Kitty repeated without book the eight best lines in the play. Went in our mobs to the dumb man according to appointment. Told me that my lover's name began with a G. Mem. The conjurer was within a letter of Mr. Froth's name, etc. Upon looking back into this my journal, I find that I am at a loss to know whether I pass my time well or ill; and indeed never thought of considering how I did it before I perused your speculation upon that subject. I scarce find a single action in these five days that I can thoroughly approve of, except the working upon the violet leaf, which I am resolved to finish the first day I am at leisure. As for Mr. Froth and Veny, I did not think they took up so much of my time and thoughts as I find they do upon my journal. The latter of them I will turn off, if you insist upon it; and if Mr. Froth does not bring matters to a conclusion very suddenly, I will not let my life run away in a dream. Your humble servant, CLARINDA. To resume one of the morals of my first paper, and to confirm Clarinda in her good inclinations, I would have her consider what a pretty figure she would make among posterity were the history of her whole life published like these five days of it. I shall conclude my paper with an epitaph written by an uncertain author on Sir Philip Sidney's sister, a lady who seems to have been of a temper very much different from that of Clarinda. The last thought of it is so very noble, that I dare say my reader will pardon me the quotation. ON THE COUNTESS DOWAGER OF PEMBROKE. March 11, 1712. Underneath this marble hearse ALEXANDER POPE.-1688-1744. Alexander Pope is the lawful successor to Dryden in the line of representative English poets. About this extraordinary personage centres the literary and social activity of the Augustan Age, with its thin veneer of elegance and fashion, and its inherent coarseness and brutality; with its spiteful literary rivalries, its stratagems, its rancor, and its unmeasured slanders. The sturdy Dryden, robust enough to shoulder his way to the front by sheer force, had gone, and this fragile, deformed, and acutely nervous invalid reigned in his stead. The story of Pope's life is a painful one. He was weak and sickly from his infancy, and his life was "a long disease." a long disease." He is said to have had a naturally sweet and gentle disposition, but he grew up to be petulant and embittered. His father, a rich and retired merchant, was a Roman Catholic, and the preju. dice against persons of that faith was so strong at this time that Pope was prevented from attending the public schools. His education was consequently superficial and irregular. He had some instruction from a Roman Catholic priest, and afterward went to several small schools in succession, remaining a short time at each and learning but little. At one of these, the Roman Catholic seminary at Twyford, he began his career as a satirist by writing a lampoon on the master. When Pope was about twelve years old he was taken from school to live with his father at Binfield, a straggling village in Windsor Forest. Here he read much poetry, but in a rambling and desultory fashion. "I followed," he says, "everywhere as my fancy led me, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the field just as they fell in his way."* He also wrote many verses imitating the style of one or another of his favorite poets. He made metrical translations of the classics, and when between thirteen and fifteen years of age composed an epic poem of four thousand lines. By this early and incessant practice, Pope was acquiring that easy mastery of smooth and fluent versification which is characteristic of his mature. work. His first published poem, The Pastorals (1709), represents shepherds and shepherdesses in The Pastorals. an imaginary golden age, conversing in flowing couplets, and with wit and refinement. Even in that polite and artificial time, the unnaturalness of this did not pass unnoticed, and a writer in The Guardian held that the true pastoral should give a genuine picture of English country life. Essay on Criticism. Pope's next publication, The Essay on Criticism (published 1711), took London by storm. It is a didactic poem in which the established rules of composition are restated by Pope in terse, neat, and often clever, couplets. Poetry of this order was especially in accord with the reigning literary fashions, and in The Essay Pope was but following the lead of Boileau and of Dryden. Originality was neither possible nor desirable in a work which undertook to express the settled principles of criticism, yet the poem possesses a merit eminently characteristic of Pope-it is quotable. All through it we find couplets in which an idea, often commonplace enough, is packed into so terse, striking, and * Spence's "Anecdotes," p. 193. |