of the didactic, moral, and satiric kind; and, consequently, not of the most poetic species of Poetry. There is nothing in so sublime a style as the Bard of Gray. This is a matter of fact, not of reasoning; and means to point out, what Pope has actually done, not what, if he had put out his full strength, he was capable of doing. No man can possibly think, or can hint, that the Author of the Rape of the Lock, and the Eloisa, wanted imagination, or sensibility, or pathetic; but he certainly did not so often indulge and exert those talents, nor give so many proofs of them, as he did of strong sense and judgment. This turn of mind led him to admire French models; he studied Boileau attentively; formed himself upon him, as Milton formed himself upon the Grecian and Italian Sons of Fancy. He stuck to describing modern manners; but these manners, because they are familiar, uniform, artificial, and polished, are, for these four reasons, in their very nature unfit for any lofty effort of the Muse. He gradually became one of the most correct, even, and exact Poets that ever wrote; bu yet with force and spirit, finishing his pieces with a patience, a care, and assiduity, that no business nor avocation ever interrupted; so that if he does not frequently ravish and transport his reader, like his Master Dryden, yet he does not so often disgust him, like Dryden, with unexpected inequalities and absurd improprieties. He is never above or below his subject. Whatever poetical enthusiasm he actually possessed, he withheld and suppressed. The perusal of him, in most of his pieces, affects not our minds with such strong emo tions as we feel from Homer and Milton; so that no man, of a true poetical spirit, is master of himself while he reads them. Hence he is a writer fit for universal perusal, and of general utility; adapted to all ages and all stations; for the old and for the young; the man of business and the scholar. He who would think, and there are many such, the Fairy Queen, Palamon and Arcite, the Tempest, or Comus, childish and romantic, may relish Pope. Surely it is no narrow, nor invidious, nor niggardly encomium to say, he is the great Poet of Reason; the First of Ethical Authors in Verse; which he was by choice, not necessity. And this species of writing is, after all, the surest road to an extensive and immediate reputation. It lies more level to the general capacities of men, than the higher flights of more exalted and genuine poetry. Waller was more applauded than the Paradise Lost; and we all remember when Churchill was more in vogue than Gray. We live in a reasoning and prosaic age. The forests of Fairy-land have been rooted up and destroyed; the castles and the palaces of Fancy are in ruins; the magic wand of Prospero is broken and buried many fathoms in the earth. Telemachus was so universally read and admired in France, not so much on account of the poetical images and the fine imitations of Homer which it contained, but for the many artful and satirical allusions to the profligate court of Louis XIV. scattered up and down. He that treats of fashionable follies, and the topics of the day, that describes present persons and recent events, as pas Dryden did in his Absalom and Achitophel, finds many readers, whose understandings and whose sións he gratifies, and who love politics far more than poetry. The name of Chesterfield on one hand, and of Walpole on the other, failed not to make a Poem bought up, and talked of. And it cannot be doubted, that the Odes of Horace which celebrated, and the Satires which ridiculed, well-known and real characters at Rome, were more eagerly read, and more frequently cited, than the Æneid and the Georgic of Virgil. Malignant and insensible must be the critic, who should impotently dare to assert, that Pope wanted genius and imagination; but perhaps it may safely be affirmed, that his peculiar and characteristical excellences were good sense and judgment. And this was the opinion of Atterbury and Bolingbroke; and it was also his own opinion. See in Volume Ninth, the Fifth and the Nineteenth Letters; particularly what he said to Warburton at the end of the latter. If we consider him as a man, and examine his moral character impartially, we shall find that his predominant virtues seem to have been filial piety, and constancy in his friendships; an ardent love of liberty and of his country, and what seemed to be its true interest; a manly detestation of court-flatterers and servility; a frugality, and economy, and order, in his house, and at his table; at the same time that his private charities were many and great; of which Dodsley, whom he honoured with his friendship, and who partook of his beneficence, gave me several instances. His revenue was about eight hundred pounds a year. As to his religious opinions, though he would not publicly renounce the tenets of his family, from the fear of being reckoned an interested convert, yet he had too clear and solid an understanding, not to discern the gross absurdities, and glaring impieties of Popish superstition; and once owned to Dr. Warburton, that he was convinced the Church of Rome had all the marks and signs of that Antichristian Power and Apostacy, so strongly painted and predicted in the New Testament. Which opinion Dr. Warburton himself was so zealous in establishing, that he founded a Lecture for Sermons to be annually preached at Lincoln's Inn Chapel, on this very subject; persuaded, like his excellent friend Dr. Balguy, that "Popery is indeed nothing better than a refined species of Paganism; and that, so far as this extends, the Gospel has failed of its genuine effect, and left men as it found them, Polytheists and Idolaters." The approaching destruction of the Church of Rome, especially in a neighbouring kingdom, was thus remarkably foretold by the King of Prussia, 1777 : “ Le Pape et les moines finiront sans doute ; leur chute ne sera pas l'ouvrage de la raison; mais ils périront à mesure que les Finances des grandes potentates se dérangeront. En France, quand on aura epuisé tous les expédiens pour avoir des espèces, on sera forcé de seculariser des Abbayes et des Convens. Cet example sera imité, et le nombre des Cuculati reduit à peu de chose." Through the whole course of his life, Pope was |