his fubject, Pope has been much more deeply indebted to the Theodiceé of Leibnitz, to Archbifhop King's Origin of Evil, and to the Moralifts of Lord Shaftefbury, than to the philofophers above mentioned. The late Lord Bathurst repeatedly affured me, that he had read the whole scheme of the Effay on Man, in the handwriting of Bolingbroke, and drawn up in a feries of propofitions, which Pope was to verify and illuftrate in doing which, our poet, it must be confeffed, left feveral paffages fo expreffed, as to be favourable to fatalifm and neceffity, notwithstanding all the pains that can be taken, and the turas that can be given to thofe paffages, to place them on the fide of religion, and make them coincide with the fundamental doctrines of revelation.

"Thus have I endeavoured to give a critical account, with freedom, but it is hoped with impartiality, of each of Pope's works; by which review it will appear, that the largest portion of them is of the didactic, moral, and fatyric kind; and confequently not of the moft poetic fpecies of poetry; whence it is manifeft, that good fenfe and judgment were his characteristic excellencies, rather than fancy and invention; not that the author of the Rape of the Lock and Eloifa can be thought to want imagination, but because his imagination was not his predominant talent, because he indulged it not, and because he gave not fo many proofs of this talent as of the other. This turn of mind led him to admire French models; he studied Boileau attentively; formed himfelf upon him, as Milton formed himself upon

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Fancy. He ftuck to defcribing modern manners; but thofe manners, because they are familiar, uniform, artificial, and polifhed, are, in their very nature, unfit for any lofty effort of the muse. He gradually became one of the moft correct, even, and exact poets that ever wrote; polifhing his pieces with a care and affiduity, that no bufinefs or avocation ever interrupted: fo that if he does not frequently ravifh and tranfport his reader, yet he does not difguft him with unexpected inequalities and abfurd improprieties. Whatever poetical enthufiafm he actually poffefied, he withheld and ftifled. The perufal of him affects not our minds with fuch ftrong emotions as we feel from Homer and Milton; fo that

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no man of a true poetical fpirit is master of himself while he reads them. Hence, he is a writer fit for univerfal perufal; adapted to all ages and stations; for the old and for the young; the man of bufinefs and the scholar. He who would think the Fairy Queen, Palemon and Arcite, the Tempeft, or Comus, childish and romantic, might relish Pope. Surely it is no narrow and niggardly encomium to fay he is the great poet of reafon, the first of ethical authors in verfe. And this fpecies of writing is, after all, the fureft road to an extenfive reputation. It lies more level to the general capacities of men, than the higher flights of more genuine poetry.

"Where then, according to the question propofed at the beginning of this effay, fhall we with juftice be authorized to place our admired Pope? Not affuredly in the fame rank with Spencer, Shakespeare, and Milton, how ever justly we may applaud the

Eloifa and Rape of the Lock; but confidering the correctness, elegance, and utility of his works, the weight of fentiment, and the knowledge of man they contain, we may venture to affign him a place next to Milton, and just above Dryden. Yet, to bring our minds fteadily to make this decifion, we must forget for a moment the divine mufic-ode of Dryden; and may perhaps then be compelled to confefs, that though Dryden be the greater genius, yet Pope is the better artist.

"The preference here given to Pope above other modern English poets, it must be remembered, is founded on the excellencies of his works in general, and taken all together; for there are parts and paffages in other modern authors, in Young and in Thomson for inftance, equal to any of Pope; and he has written nothing in a ftrain fo truly fublime as the Bard of Gray."