ars. The thought is strongly expressed by
the eloquent Mackenzie: "_Fame is a revenue payable only to our ghosts_;
and to deny ourselves all present satisfaction, or to expose ourselves
to so much hazard for this, were as great madness as to starve
ourselves, or fight desperately for food, to be laid on our tombs after
our death."

Dryden, in his "Absalom and Achitophel," says of the Earl of
Shaftesbury,

David for him his tuneful harp had strung,
_And Heaven had wanted one immortal song_.

This verse was ringing in the ear of Pope, when with equal modesty and
felicity he adopted it in addressing his friend Dr. Arbuthnot.

Friend of my life; which did not you prolong,
_The world had wanted many an idle song!_

Howell has prefixed to his Letters a tedious poem, written in the taste
of the times, and he there says of _letters_, that they are

The heralds and sweet harbingers that move
From _East to West, on embassies of love_;
They can the _tropic cut_, and _cross the line_.

It is probable that Pope had noted this thought, for the following lines
seem a beautiful heightening of the idea:

Heaven first taught _letters_, for some wretch's aid,
Some banish'd _lover_, or some captive maid.

Then he adds, they

_Speed the soft intercourse_ from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from _Indus_ to the _Pole_.
_Eloisa_.

There is another passage in "Howell's Letters," which has a great
affinity with a thought of Pope, who, in "the Rape of the Lock," says,

Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare,
And _beauty draws us with a single hair_.

Howell writes, p. 290, "'Tis a powerful sex:--they were too strong for
the first, the strongest and wisest man that was; they must needs be
strong, when _one hair of a woman can draw more than an hundred pair of
oxen_."

Pope's description of the death of the lamb, in his "Essay on Man," is
finished with the nicest touches, and is one of the finest pictures our
poetry exhibits. Even familiar as it is to our ear, we never examine it
but with undiminished admiration.

The _lamb_, thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.

After pausing on the last two fine verses, will not the reader smile
that I should conjecture the image might orig