"Mr. Pope's Eloisa to Abelard is," says Mason, "such a _chef-d'œuvre_ that nothing of the kind can be relished after it. Yet it is not the story itself, nor the sympathy it excites in us, as Dr. Johnson would have us think, that constitutes the principal merit in that incomparable poem. It is the happy use he has made of the monastic gloom of the Paraclete, and of what I will call papistical machinery, which gives it its capital charm, so that I am almost inclined to wonder (if I could wonder at any of that writer's criticisms) that he did not take notice of this beauty, as his own superstitious turn certainly must have given him more than a sufficient relish for it."[577] The buildings and scenery, solemn and sombre, undoubtedly heighten the effect. There is an impressive harmony between the over-cast mind of Heloisa, and the objects around her, which deepens the sadness. But the comment of Mason is unfounded. Johnson _did_ "notice" the "beauty" derived from the gloom of the convent, while the assertion that this is the "principal merit" of the poem is an extravagant subordination of the human interest, which is the main subject of the Epistle, to the comparatively brief though exquisite description of the local accompaniments. Mason disliked and dreaded Johnson, and avenged himself when Johnson was dead, by feeble expressions of contempt. The Rape of the Lock and the Epistle to Eloisa stand alone in Pope's works. He produced nothing else which resembled them. They have the merit of being master-pieces in opposite styles. The first is remarkable for its delicious fancy and sportive satire; the second for its fervid passion and tender melancholy. Two poems of such rare and such different excellence would alone entitle Pope to his fame. Like most great authors he published not a little which is mediocre, but he is to be estimated by the qualities in which he soared above the herd, and not by the lower range of mind he possessed in common with inferior men. The Rape of the Lock is a higher effort of genius than the Epistle. Pope's adaptation of his aery, refulgent sylphs to the ephemeral trivialities of fashionable life, the admirable art with which he fitted his fairy machinery to the follies and common-places of a giddy London day, the poetic grace which he threw around his sarcastic narrative, and which unites with it as naturally as does the rose with its thorny stem, are all unborrowed beauties, and consummate in their kind. The story and sentiments of Heloisa were prepared to his hand, and the power is limited to the strength and sweetness of his language and versification, and to the vigour with which he appropriated and expanded a single leading idea. His imagination was not prolific, and his thoughts seldom sprung from within. Sir William Napier said to Moore, "You are a poet by force of will; Byron by force of nature," which Moore acknowledged to be true. Pope, like Moore, was a poet because from his childhood he had