My childhood fled your couplet's clarion tone, And sought for Homer in the prose of Bohn. Still through the dust of that dim prose appears The flight of arrows and the sheen of spears; Still we may trace what hearts heroic feel, And hear the bronze that hurtles on the steel! But ah, your Iliad seems a half-pretence, Where wits, not heroes, prove their skill in fence, And great Achilles' eloquence doth show As if no centaur trained him, but Boileau! Again, your verse is orderly,--and more,-- "The waves behind impel the waves before"; Monotonously musical they glide, Till couplet unto couplet hath replied. But turn to Homer! How his verses sweep! Surge answers surge and deep doth call on deep; This line in foam and thunder issues forth, Spurred by the West or smitten by the North, Sombre in all its sullen deeps, and all Clear at the crest, and foaming to the fall; The next with silver murmur dies away, Like tides that falter to Calypso's Bay! (ANDREW LANG: _Letters to Dead Authors; Pope_.) Compare with this the equally clever defence of Pope's verse by Mr. Dobson: Suppose you say your Worst of Pope, declare His Jewels Paste, his Nature a Parterre, His Art but Artifice--I ask once more Where have you seen such Artifice before? Where have you seen a Parterre better grac'd, Or gems that glitter like his Gems of Paste? Where can you show, among your Names of Note, So much to copy and so much to quote? And where, in Fine, in all our English Verse, A Style more trenchant and a Sense more terse? So I, that love the old Augustan Days Of formal Courtesies and formal Phrase; That like along the finish'd line to feel The Ruffle's Flutter and the Flash of Steel; That like my Couplet as compact as clear; That like my Satire sparkling tho' severe, Unmix'd with Bathos and unmarr'd by Trope, I fling my Cap for Polish--and for POPE![23] (AUSTIN DOBSON: _Dialogue to the Memory of Mr. Alexander Pope_.) Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close Up yonder hill the village murmur rose; There, as I passed with careless steps and slow, The mingling notes came softened from below; The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, The sober herd that lowed to meet their young; The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, The playful children just let loose from school; The watchdog's voice that bayed the whispering wind, And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind; These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, And filled each pause the nightingale had made. But now the sounds of population fail, No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread, For all the bloomy flush of life is fled. (GOLDSMITH: _The Deserted Village_. 1770.)