When we confider the juft tafte, the ftrong sense, the knowledge of men, books, and opinions, that are fo predominant in the Effay on Criticifm, and at the fame time recollect that it was written before the Author was twenty years old, we are naturally ftruck with astonishment; and must readily agree to place him among the first critics, though not, as Dr. Johnson says, " among the first poets," on this account alone. As a poet, he must rank much higher, for his Eloifa, and Rape of the Lock. This judgment reminds one of what the fame critic has faid of Dryden's Religio Laici; that one might have expected to have found in it, the effulgence of his genius; though, as he adds, on an argumentative fubject; and therefore improper for a difplay of genius. As much as I revere and respect the memory of my old acquaintance Dr. Johnson*, and as highly as I think of his abilities, integrity, and virtue, yet muft I be pardoned for faying, that I cannot poffibly fubfcribe to many of his critical decifions; particularly to what he has faid of the Lycidas, Il Penferofo,

and

* The perpetual pompousness, and the uninterrupted elaboration, of the over-ornamented style of the Rambler, makes one wish that the excellent Author had recollected the opinion of Cicero ; "Is enim eft eloquens, qui et humilia fubtiliter, et magna graviter, et mediocria temperatè poteft dicere. Nam qui nihil poteft tranquillè, nihil leniter, nihil definitè, diftin&tè poteft dicere, is, cum non præparatis auribus inflammare rem cœpit, furere apud fanos, et quafi inter fobrios bacchari temulentus videtur.”

and Latin poems of Milton; of the Sixth Book of Paradife Loft; of Taffo's Aminta; of the Rhyming Tragedies, Ode to Killigrew, and the Fables of Dryden; of Chaucer; of the Rehearsal; of Prior; of Congreve's Mourning Bride; of Blackmore; of Yalden; of Pomfret; of Dyer; of Garth; of Lyttelton; of Fielding; of Harris; of Hammond; of Beattie; of Shenstone; of Savage; of Hughes; of Spence ; of Akenfide; of Collins; of Pope's Effay on Man, and Imitations of Horace; and of the Odes of Gray.

The Effay on Criticism was first advertised at the end of the Spectator, No. 65. May 15, 1711, and was praised by Addison in the December following, in Number 253 of the Spectator. But Pope was not a little displeased at one sentence in this paper, in which Addison faid, "I am forry to find an Author "who is very juftly esteemed among the best judges, "has admitted fome strokes of ill-nature into a very

fine poem, which was published fome months fince, " and is a master-piece of its kind." He adds, "The observations follow one another, like those in "Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical "regularity which would have been requifite in a "prose writer." So that Addifon did not perceive that clear order and clofe connection, which Warburton ftrove to discover, in order to give fome fhadow of propriety to a perpetual Commentary upon it.

The

The fierce hoftilities of Dennis against Pope, began from fome paffages in this Effay, which this redoubted critic applied to himself, and never forgave; but purfued our Author, through life, in bitter invectives against every work he gradually published. Old Mr. Lewis, the bookfeller in Ruffel-ftreet, who printed the first edition of this Effay in quarto, without Pope's name, informed me, that it lay many days in his fhop, unnoticed and unread; and that, piqued with this neglect, the Author came one day, and great packed up and directed twenty copies to several men; among whom he could recollect none but Lord Lansdowne and the Duke of Buckingham; and that in confequence of these presents, and his name being known, the book began to be called for. This Effay, it is faid, was firft written in profe, according to the precept of Vida, in his first book, and the practice of Racine, who was accustomed to draw out in plain profe, not only the fubject of each of the five acts, but of every scene and every speech, that he might see the conduct and coherence of the whole at one view, and would then fay, "My Tragedy is "finished."

The Meffiah appeared first in the Spectator, 1712, with a warm recommendation by Steele. Nothing can be added to the just and universal approbation with which it was received and read. It raised the highest expectations of what the Author was capable of performing.

He

*

He was not fo happy in his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day; which, in refpect both of fubject and execution, is fo manifeftly inferior to that unrivalled one of his mafter, Dryden; but which, Dr. Johnfon, by a strange perversity of judgment, pronounces to contain nothing equal to the first bombaft ftanza of his Ode on Killegrew. Pope's Ode, many years after it was written, was fet to mufic by Dr. Greene, as were the two Choruffes to the tragedy of Brutus, by Bononcini, part of which were written by the Duke of Buckingham. Mr. Galliard fet to mufic the Chorus of Julius Cafar, entirely written by His Grace. This appears from a letter now before me, from Mr. Galliard to Mr. Duncombe.

It was at Steele's defire † that he wrote that beautiful little Ode, The Dying Chriftian to his Soul, to be fet to mufic. But it was not quite candid and open in our Author to tell Steele, that he would fee he had not only the verses of Adrian, but the fine fragment

* Irregular Odes, of which this is one, feem now to be univerfally exploded: Dr. Brown has, however, remarked, "that the return of the fame measure, in the Strophe, Antiftrophe, and Epode, of the ancient Greek Ode, was the natural confequence of its union with the Dance. But this union being irrecoverably lost, the unvaried measure of the Ode becomes, at best, an unmeaning thing; and indeed is an abfurd one, as it deprives the Poet of that variety of measure, which often gives a great energy to the compofition, by the incidental and fudden intervention of an abrupt or lengthened verfification."

In general, our Author's fubjects, which is a happy circumftance for a poet, were chofen by himself.

fragment of Sappho in his head; and totally to fupprefs the name of Flatman, whofe Ode he not only imitated, but copied fome lines of it verbatim.

If we knew the history of that most unfortunate Lady, who is the subject of the sweet and pathetic Elegy, and could relate it at large, it might give us an opportunity of enlivening thefe Memoirs, with what the Life of a retired Poet muft unavoidably want, fome interefting event. No fuch does the Life of our Author afford, who was in no public ftation nor employment, as were Milton, Prior, and Addison; and who spent most of his time among his papers and books. All that can now be learnt of this Lady, is to be found in the notes on this Elegy; and is therefore not repeated in this place. A very different fcene, and a Lady in another fort of fituation, appeared, in his next poem, where all was gaiety and gallantry. -X-Lord Petre, in a frolic, carried rather beyond the bounds of delicacy and good-breeding, having cut off a favourite lock of Mrs. Arabella Fermor's hair, his rudeness, as it was called, was refented, and occafioned a serious rupture betwixt the two families. Mr. Caryl, a friend to both parties, defired Mr. Pope to write a piece of raillery on this inviting fubject, which might appease their resentment. The Rape of the Lock, therefore, that most delicious poem, in which SATIRE wears the ceftus of VENUS, was produced in a fortnight, and appeared, 1711, in only two cantos, in a Mifcellany of Lintot.

Finding it

received