"The most _perfect_ of our poets, and the purest of our moralists."--"He is the _moral_ poet of all civilization; and, as such, let us hope that he will one day be the national poet of mankind. He is the only poet that never shocks; the only poet whose _faultlessness_ has been made his reproach. Cast your eye over his productions; consider their extent, and contemplate their variety:--pastoral, passion, mock-heroic, translation, satire, ethics,--all excellent, and often perfect. If his great charm be his _melody_, how comes it that foreigners adore him even in their diluted translations?"[80] Mr. Mason has also farther recorded the resplendent fame of this celebrated man; for in his _Musæus_, a monody to the memory of Pope, he invokes the shades of Chaucer, Spencer, and Milton, to do homage to his departing spirit:-- ----to cheer thee at this rueful time While black death doth on thy heart-strings prey. So may we greet thee with a nobler strain, When soon we meet for aye in yon star-sprinkled plain. Milton thus begins _his_ homage:-- Thrice hail, thou heaven-taught warbler, last and best Of all the train! Poet, in whom conjoin'd All that to ear, or heart, or head, could yield Rapture; harmonious, manly, clear, sublime! Accept this gratulation: may it cheer Thy sinking soul; or these corporeal ills Ought daunt thee, nor appal. Know, in high heav'n Fame blooms eternal on that spirit divine, Who builds immortal verse."[81] Sir E. Brydges, in his "Letters on the Genius of Lord Byron," thus characterizes the grace and sweetness of his pathetic powers, in his _Eloisa_:--"When either his passions or imaginations _were_ roused, they were deep, strong, and splendid. Notwithstanding _Eloisa_ was an historical subject, his invention of circumstances of detail, his imagery, the changes and turns of passion, the brilliancy of hues thrown upon the whole, the eloquence, the tenderness, the fire, the inimitable grace and felicity of language, were all the fruits of creative genius. This poem stands alone in its kind; never anticipated, and never likely to be approached hereafter." Young uttered this sublime apostrophe when the death of Pope was first announced to him:-- _Thou, who couldst make immortals_, art thou dead? Of his _Essay on Man_, the Nouveau Dict. Hist. Portatif thus speaks:--"Une metaphysique lumineuse, ornée des charmes de la poësie, une morale touchante, dont les leçons pénetrent le coeur et convainquent l'esprit, des peintures vives, ou l'homme apprend a se connoître, pour apprendre à deviner meilleur; tels sont les principaux caracteres qui distinguent le poëme Anglois. Son imagination est également sage et féconde, elle prodigue les pensées neunes, et donne le piquant de la nouveanté, aux pensées anciennes; il embelloit les matieres les plus seches, par la coloris d'une élocution noble, facile, energèque, variée avec un art infini."