ual curls, and well conspir'd to deck
With shining ringlets the smooth iv'ry neck."

The following is the introduction to the account of Belinda's assault upon
the baron bold, who had dissevered one of these locks "from her fair head
for ever and for ever."

"Now meet thy fate, incens'd Belinda cry'd,
And drew a deadly bodkin from her side.
(The same his ancient personage to deck,
Her great, great grandsire wore about his neck,
In three seal-rings; which after, melted down,
Form'd a vast buckle for his widow's gown;
Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew,
The bells she jingled, and the whistle blew:
Then in a bodkin grac'd her mother's hairs,
Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears.)"

I do not know how far Pope was indebted for the original idea, or the
delightful execution of this poem, to the Lutrin of Boileau.

The Rape of the Lock is a double-refined essence of wit and fancy, as the
Essay on Criticism is of wit and sense. The quantity of thought and
observation in this work, for so young a man as Pope was when he wrote it,
is wonderful: unless we adopt the supposition, that most men of genius
spend the rest of their lives in teaching others what they themselves have
learned under twenty. The conciseness and felicity of the expression is
equally remarkable. Thus in reasoning on the variety of men's opinions, he
says--

"'Tis with our judgments, as our watches; none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own."

Nothing can be more original and happy than the general remarks and
illustrations in the Essay: the critical rules laid down are too much
those of a school, and of a confined one. There is one passage in the
Essay on Criticism in which the author speaks with that eloquent
enthusiasm of the fame of ancient writers, which those will always feel
who have themselves any hope or chance of immortality. I have quoted the
passage elsewhere, but I will repeat it here.

"Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;
Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage,
Destructive war, and all-involving age.
Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days,
Immortal heirs of universal praise!
Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow."

These lines come with double force and beauty on the reader as they were
dictated by the writer's despair of ever attaining that lasting glory
whic