and nothing
can be more admirable than the charge delivered by Ariel to the sylphs
to guard Belinda from an apprehended but unknown danger. The concluding
lines shall be quoted:

'Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,
His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,
Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins,
Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins;
Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie,
Or wedged, whole ages, in a bodkin's eye;
Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
While clogged he beats his silken wings in vain;
Or alum styptics, with contracting power,
Shrink his thin essence like a rivelled flower;
Or, as Ixion fixed, the wretch shall feel
The giddy motion of the whirling mill,
In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow,
And tremble at the sea that froths below!'

Another striking portion of the poem is the description of the Spanish
game of Ombre, imitated from Vida's _Scacchia Ludus_. 'Vida's poem,'
says Mr. Elwin, 'is a triumph of ingenuity, when the intricacy of chess
is considered, and the difficulty of expressing the moves in a dead
language. Yet the original is eclipsed by Pope's more consummate
copy.'[12]

Many famous passages illustrative of Pope's art might be extracted from
this poem, but it will suffice to give the portrait of Belinda:

'On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore;
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
Quick as her eyes and as unfixed as those;
Favours to none, to all she smiles extends,
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
Bright as the 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 them all.'

The _Temple of Fame_, a liberal paraphrase of Chaucer's _House of Fame_,
followed in 1715, and despite the praise of Steele, who declared that it
had a thousand beauties, and of Dr. Johnson, who observes that every
part is splendid, must be pronounced one of Pope's least attractive
pieces. Two poems of the emotional and sentimental class, _Eloisa to
Abelard_ and the _Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady_ (1717),
are more worthy of attention. Nowhere, probably, in the language are
finer specimens t