And out of this comment and thought of Pope's, contributed casually (if Pope ever did anything _casually_) to the _Spectator_, came by and by from the poet's anvil, that immortal hymn we all know,-- "Vital spark of heavenly flame, Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame; Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying, Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!" _The Rape of the Lock._ [Sidenote: Rape of the Lock] I cited two significant fragments from the _Rape of the Lock_, a poem belonging to Pope's early period, and which is reckoned by most poets and critics,[17] as well as biographers, his masterpiece, and a beautiful work of the highest literary art. I recognize the superior authority, but cannot share the exalted admiration; at least, it does not beget such loving approval as brings one back again and again to its perusal. It does not seem to me to furnish very inspiring reading. {40} The setting of this little poem is not large; the story is of a stolen lock of hair, and of the resentments that follow; and if one might venture upon a synopsis of so delicate a feat of workmanship, it might run in this way:--Belinda, the despoiled heroine, sleeps; sprites put dreams in her head and give warning of impending woe. "Shock" (her dog) barks and wakes her; she betakes herself to her toilet--the fairy-fingered sylphs assisting: Some thrid the mazy ringlets of her hair; Some hang upon the pendants of her ear, --all pictured like carving on a cherry-stone. At last, fully equipped, she goes to a fête upon the Thames; pretty glimpses of the river scenes follow; a crazy baron covets a lock of Belinda's hair. The zephyrs play; day fades; cards come; crowding sprites pile into the game, and twist all into a fairy cable. The covetous baron snips off a lock of Belinda's hair, while she bends over the tea-pot. The nimble sylphs bring from the "Cave of Spleen" a stock of shrieks, and tears, and megrims. Sir Plume ("of amber snuff-box justly vain") champions Belinda, and demands satisfaction of the {41} ravisher--which he does not win; so the battle rages--"Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whalebones crack," and in the hurly-burly the stolen lock gets wafted into "lunar spheres," and comet-like, closes the shining tale: "This lock the muse [thus] consecrates to Fame And midst the stars inscribes Belinda's name." Yet Belinda's sovereignty is of an ignoble sort; her tiara made up of pins and pomades; indeed the women all are as small as the sylphs; toy creatures, and creatures of toys; no nobility, in or about them; and very much to make an honest, self-respecting woman of our time fling down the silvery poem with a wearisome distaste.