In the passage of time, and with the increase of literature, the real merits of Pope were for some time neglected, or misrepresented. The world is beginning to discern and recognize these again. Learned, industrious, self-reliant, controversial, and, above all, harmonious, instead of giving vent to the highest fancies in simple language, he has treated the common-place--that which is of universal interest--in melodious and splendid diction. But, above all, he stands as the representative of his age: a wit among the comic dramatists who were going out and the essayists who were coming in; a man of the world with Lady Mary and the gay parties on the Thames; a polemic, who dealt keen thrusts and who liked to see them rankle, and who yet writhed in agony when the _riposte_ came; a Roman Catholic in faith and a latitudinarian in speech;--such was Pope as a type of that world in which he lived. A poet of the first rank he was not; he invented nothing; but he established the canons of poetry, attuned to exquisite harmony the rhymed couplet which Dryden had made so powerful an instrument, improved the language, discerned and reconnected the discordant parts of literature; and thus it is that he towers above all the poets of his age, and has sent his influence through those that followed, even to the present day. OTHER WRITERS OF THE PERIOD. _Matthew Prior_, 1664-1721: in his early youth he was a waiter in his uncle's tap-room, but, surmounting all difficulties, he rose to be a distinguished poet and diplomatist. He was an envoy to France, where he was noted for his wit and ready repartee. His love songs are somewhat immoral, but exquisitely melodious. His chief poems are: _Alma_, a philosophic piece in the vein of Hudibras; _Solomon_, a Scripture poem; and, the best of all, _The City and Country Mouse_, a parody on Dryden's _Hind and Panther_, which he wrote in conjunction with Mr. Montague. He was imprisoned by the Whigs in 1715, and lost all his fortune. He was distinguished by having Dr. Johnson as his biographer, in the _Lives of the Poets_. _John Arbuthnot_, 1667-1735: born in Scotland. He was learned, witty, and amiable. Eminent in medicine, he was physician to the court of Queen Anne. He is chiefly known in literature as the companion of Pope and Swift, and as the writer with them of papers in the Martinus Scriblerus Club, which was founded in 1714, and of which Pope, Gay, Swift, Arbuthnot, Harvey, Atterbury, and others, were the principal members. Arbuthnot wrote a _History of John Bull_, which was designed to render the war then carried on by Marlborough unpopular, and certainly conduced to that end.