387 of human life were copied from the inftinctive operations of other animals; that if the world be made for man, it may be said that man was made for geese. To these profound principles of natural knowledge are added fome moral inftructions equally new; that selfintereft, well understood, will produce focial concord; that men are mutual gainers by mutual benefits; that evil is fometimes balanced by good; that human advantages are unftable and fallacious, of uncertain duration, and doubtful effect; that our true honour is, not to have a great part, but to act it well; that virtue only is our own; and that happiness is always in our power. Surely a man of no very comprehenfive fearch may venture to say that he has heard all this before; but it was never till now recommended by fuch a blaze of embellishment, or fuch sweetness of melody. The vigorous contraction of fome thoughts, the luxuriant amplification of others, the incidental illuftrations, and fometimes the dignity, fometimes the foftness of the verfes, enchain philofophy, fufpend criticism, and opprefs judgement by overpowering pleasure. This is true of many paragraphs; yet if I had undertaken to exemplify Pope's felicity of compofition before a rigid critick, I fhould not select the Effay on Man; for it contains more lines unsuccessfully laboured, more harshness of diction, more thoughts imperfectly expreffed, more levity without elegance, and more heavinefs without ftrength, than will eafily be found in all his other works. The Characters of Menan d Women are the product of diligent fpeculation upon human life; much labour has been bestowed upon them, and Pope very feldom la boured boured in vain. That his excellence may be properly estimated, I recommend a comparison of his Characters of Women with Boileau's Satire; it will then be seen with how much more perfpicacity female nature is in-. veftigated, and female excellence selected; and he furely is no mean writer to whom Boileau fhall be found inferior. The Characters of Men, however, are written with more, if not with deeper, thought, and. exhibit many paffages exquifitely beautiful. The Gem and the Flower will not eafily be equalled. In the women's part are fome defects; the character of Attolla is not fo neatly finished as that of Clodio; and fome of the female characters may be found perhaps more frequently among men; what is faid of Philomede was true of Prior. In the Epiftles to Lord Bathurst and Lord Burling- 384 ton, Dr. Warburton has endeavoured to find a train of thought which was never in the writer's head, and, to fupport his hypothefis, has printed that firft which was published laft. In one, the most valuable paffage is perhaps the Elogy on Good Senfe, and the other the End of the Duke of Buckingham. The Epiftle to Arbuthnot, now arbitrarily called the Prologue to the Satires, is a performance confifting, as it seems, of many fragments wrought into one defign, which by this union of scattered beauties contains more striking paragraphs than could probably have been brought together into an occafional work. As there is no ftronger motive to exertion than felf-defence, no part has more elegance, fpirit, or dignity, than the poet's vindication of his own character. The meaneft paffage is the fatire upon Sporus. Of the two poems which derived their names from the year, and which are called the Epilogue to the Satires, it was very juftly remarked by Savage, that the fecond was in the whole more strongly conceived, and more equally fupported, but that it had no fingle paffages equal to the contention in the firft for the dignity of Vice, and the celebration of the triumph of Corruption. The Imitations of Horace feem to have been written as relaxations of his genius. This employment became his favourite by its facility; the plan was ready to his hand, and nothing was required but to accommodate as he could the fentiments of an old author to recent facts or familiar images; but what is easy is feldom excellent; fuch imitations cannot give pleasure to common readers; the man of learning may be fometimes furprised and delighted by an unexpected paTallel; but the comparifon requires knowledge of the original, which will likewise often detect ftrained ap、 plications. Between Roman images and English manners there will be an irreconcileable diffimilitude, and the works will be generally uncouth and party-coloured; neither original nor tranflated, neither ancient nor modern Pope * In one of these poems is a couplet, to which belongs a story that I once heard the reverend Dr. Ridley relate. rage; 6 Slander or poifon dread from Delia's Sir Francis Page, a judge well known in his time, conceiving that his name was meant to fill up the blank, fent his clerk to Mr. Pope, to complain of the infult. l'ope told the young man, that the blank might be fupplied by many monofyllables, other than the judge's Qame:-but, fir, faid the clerk, the judge fays that no other word will Pope had, in proportions very nicely adjusted to 388 each other, all the qualities that conftitute genius. He had Invention, by which new trains of events are formed, and new fcenes of imagery difplayed, as in the Rape of the Lock; and by which extrinsick and adventitious embellishments and illuftrations are connected with a known fubject, as in the Effay on Criticism. He had Imagination, which ftrongly impreffes on the writer's mind, and enables him to convey to the reader, the various forms of nature, incidents of life and energies of paffion, as in his Eloifa, Windfor Foreft, and the Ethick Epiftles. He had Judgement, which felects from life or nature what the present purpose requires, and, by feparating the effence of things from its concomitants, often makes the representation more powerful than the reality: and he had colours of language always before him, ready to decorate his matter with every grace of elegant expreffion, as when he accommodates his diction to the wonderful multiplicity of Homer's fentiments and defcriptions. Poetical expreffion includes found as well as meaning; Mufick, fays Dryden, is inarticulate poctry; among the excellences of Pope, therefore, must be mentioned the melody of his metre. By perufing the works of Dryden, he discovered the most perfect fabrick of English verfe, and habituated himself to that only which he found the beft; in confequence of which reftraint, his poetry has been cenfured as too uniformly mufical, and will make sense of the paffage. So then it feems,' fays Pope, 'your master is not only a judge, but a poet: as that is the cafe, the odds are against me. Give my refpects to the judge, and tell him, í 'will not contend with one that has the advantage of me, and he may S up the blank as he pleafes.' 390 as glutting the car with unvaried fweetnefs. I fufpect this objection to be the cant of thofe who judge by principles rather than perception; and who would even themselves have less pleasure in his works, if he had tried to relieve attention by ftudied difcords, or affected to break his lines and vary his pauses. But though he was thus careful of his verfification, he did not opprefs his powers with fuperfluous rigour. He feems to have thought with Boileau, that the practice of writing might be refined till the difficulty fhould overbalance the advantage. The conftruction of his language is not always ftrictly grammatical; with those rhymes which prescription had conjoined he contented himself, without regard to Swift's remonstrances, though there was no ftriking confonance; nor was he very careful to vary his terminations, or to refuse admiffion at a finall distance to the fame rhymes. To Swift's edict for the exclufion of Alexandrines and Triplets he paid little regard; he admitted them, but, in the opinion of Fenton, too rarely; he uses them more liberally in his tranflation than his poems. He has a few double rhymes; and always, I think, unfuccefsfully, except once in the Rape of the Lock, Expletives he very early ejected from his verses; but he now and then admits an epithet rather commodious than important. Each of the fix firft lines of the Iliad might lose two fyllables with very little diminution of the meaning; and fometimes, after all his art and labour, one verfe feems to be made for the fake of another, In his latter productions the diction is fometimes vitiated by French idioms, with which Bolingbroke had perhaps infected him, |