els fear to tread.

We may waive a special notice of his _Pastorals_, which, like those of
Dryden, are but clever imitations of Theocritus and anachronisms of the
Alexandrian period. Of their merits, we may judge from his own words. "If
they have any merit, it is to be attributed to some good old authors,
whose works as I had leisure to study, so I hope I have not wanted care to
imitate."

RAPE OF THE LOCK.--The poem which displays most originality of invention
is the _Rape of the Lock_. It is, perhaps, the best and most charming
specimen of the mock-heroic to be found in English; and it is specially
deserving of attention, because it depicts the social life of the period
in one of its principal phases. Miss Arabella Fermor, one of the reigning
beauties of London society, while on a pleasure party on the Thames, had a
lock of her hair surreptitiously cut off by Lord Petre. Although it was
designed as a joke, the belle was very angry; and Pope, who was a friend
of both persons, wrote this poem to assuage her wrath and to reconcile
them. It has all the system and construction of an epic. The poet
describes, with becoming delicacy, the toilet of the lady, at which she is
attended by obsequious sylphs.

The party embark upon the river, and the fair lady is described in the
splendor of her charms:

This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,
Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind
In equal curls, and well conspired to deck,
With shining ringlets, the smooth, ivory neck.

* * * * *

Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare.
And beauty draws us by a single hair.

Surrounding sylphs protect the beauty; and one to whom the lock has been
given in charge, flutters unfortunately too near, and is clipped in two by
the scissors that cut the lock. It is a rather extravagant conclusion,
even in a mock-heroic poem, that when the strife was greatest to restore
the lock, it flew upward:

A sudden star, it shot through liquid air,
And drew behind a radiant trail of hair,

and thus, and always, it

Adds new glory to the shining sphere.

With these simple and meagre materials, Pope has constructed an harmonious
poem in which the sylphs, gnomes, and other sprites of the Rosicrucian
philosophy find appropriate place and service. It failed in its principal
purpose of reconciliation, but it has given us the best mock-heroic poem
in the language. As mig