love of fame." Pope's rhymes are constantly defective, being rhymes to
the eye instead of the ear; and this to a greater degree, not only than
in later, but than in preceding writers. The praise of his versification
must be confined to its uniform smoothness and harmony. In the
translation of the Iliad, which has been considered as his masterpiece
in style and execution, he continually changes the tenses in the same
sentence for the purposes of the rhyme, which shews either a want of
technical resources, or great inattention to punctilious exactness. But
to have done with this.

The epistle of Eloise to Abelard is the only exception I can think
of, to the general spirit of the foregoing remarks; and I should be
disingenuous not to acknowledge that it is an exception. The foundation
is in the letters themselves of Abelard and Eloise, which are quite as
impressive, but still in a different way. It is fine as a poem: it is
finer as a piece of high-wrought eloquence. No woman could be supposed
to write a better love-letter in verse. Besides the richness of the
historical materials, the high _gusto_ of the original sentiments which
Pope had to work upon, there were perhaps circumstances in his own
situation which made him enter into the subject with even more than a
poet's feeling. The tears shed are drops gushing from the heart: the
words are burning sighs breathed from the soul of love. Perhaps the poem
to which it bears the greatest similarity in our language, is Dryden's
Tancred and Sigismunda, taken from Boccaccio. Pope's Eloise will bear
this comparison; and after such a test, with Boccaccio for the original
author, and Dryden for the translator, it need shrink from no other.
There is something exceedingly tender and beautiful in the sound of the
concluding lines:

"If ever chance two wandering lovers brings