It is a futile thing--and the cause of a train of futilities--to
hail "style" as though it were a separable quality in literature,
and it is not in that illusion that the style of the opening of
Aphra Behn's resounding song is to be praised. But it IS the
style--implying the reckless and majestic heart--that first takes
the reader of these great verses.


HYMN (The spacious firmament on high)


Whether Addison wrote the whole of this or not,--and it seems that
the inspired passages are none of his--it is to me a poem of
genius, magical in spite of the limited diction.


ELEGY TO THE MEMORY OF AN UNFORTUNATE LADY


Also in spite of limited diction--the sign of thought closing in,
as it did fast close in during those years--are Pope's tenderness
and passion communicated in this beautiful elegy. It would not be
too much to say that all his passion, all his tenderness, and
certainly all his mystery, are in the few lines at the opening and
close. The Epistle of Eloisa is (artistically speaking) but a
counterfeit. Yet Pope's Elegy begins by stealing and translating
into the false elegance of altered taste that lovely and poetic
opening of Ben Jonson's -

"What beckoning ghost, besprent with April dew,