ions; consider their extent, and
contemplate their variety:--pastoral, passion, mock-heroic, translation,
satire, ethics,--all excellent, and often perfect. If his great charm be
his _melody_, how comes it that foreigners adore him even in their
diluted translations?"[80]

Mr. Mason has also farther recorded the resplendent fame of this
celebrated man; for in his _Musaeus_, a monody to the memory of Pope, he
invokes the shades of Chaucer, Spencer, and Milton, to do homage to his
departing spirit:--

----to cheer thee at this rueful time
While black death doth on thy heart-strings prey.
So may we greet thee with a nobler strain,
When soon we meet for aye in yon star-sprinkled plain.

Milton thus begins _his_ homage:--

Thrice hail, thou heaven-taught warbler, last and best
Of all the train! Poet, in whom conjoin'd
All that to ear, or heart, or head, could yield
Rapture; harmonious, manly, clear, sublime!
Accept this gratulation: may it cheer
Thy sinking soul; or these corporeal ills
Ought daunt thee, nor appal. Know, in high heav'n
Fame blooms eternal on that spirit divine,
Who builds immortal verse."[81]

Sir E. Brydges, in his "Letters on the Genius of Lord Byron," thus
characterizes the grace and sweetness of his pathetic powers, in his
_Eloisa_:--"When either his passions or imaginations _were_ roused, they
were deep, strong, and splendid. Notwithstanding _Eloisa_ was an
historical subject, his invention of circumstances of detail, his
imagery, the changes and turns of passion, the brilliancy of hues thrown
upon the whole, the eloquence, the tenderness, the fire, the inimitable
grace and felicity of language, were all the fruits of creative genius.
This poem stands alone in its kind; never anticipated, and never likely
to be approached hereafter."

Young uttered this sublime apostrophe when the death of Pope was first
announced to him:--

_Thou, who couldst make immortals_, art thou dead?

Of his _Essay on Man_, the Nouveau Dict. Hist. Portatif thus
speaks:--"Une metaphysique lumineuse, ornee des charmes de la poesie,
une morale touchante, dont les lecons penetrent le coeur et
convainquent l'esprit, des peintures vives, ou l'homme apprend a se
connoitre, pour apprendre a deviner meilleur; tels sont les principaux
caracteres qui distinguent le poeme Anglois. Son imagination est
egalement sage et feconde, elle prodigue les pensees neunes, et donne le