With founds Teraphic ring: Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O Death! where is thy Sting? 15 THIS Ode was written, we find, at the defire of Steele; and our Poet, in a letter to him on that occafion, fays," You have it, as Cowley calls it, juft warm from the brain; it came to me the first moment I waked this morning; yet you'll fee, it was not so abfolutely inspiration, but that I had in my head, not only the verfes of Hadrian, but the fine fragment of Sappho." It is poffible, however, that our Author might have had another compofition in his head, befides those he here refers to : for there is a close and surprising resemblance between this ode of Pope, and one of an obfcure and forgotten rhymer of the age of Charles the Second, namely Thomas Flatman; from whofe dunghill, as well as from the dregs of Crafhaw, of Carew, of Herbert, and others (for it is well known he was a great reader of all those poets), Pope has very judicioufly collected gold. And the following ftanza is, perhaps, the only valuable one Flatman has produced: When on my fick bed I languifh; Full of forrow, full of anguish, Fainting, gafping, trembling, crying, Be not fearful, come away ! The third and fourth lines are eminently good and pathetic, and the climax well preferved, the very turn of them is clofely copied by Pope; as is likewife the ftriking circumftance of the dying man's imagining he hears a voice calling him away: Vital fpark of heav'nly flame. Quit, O quit, this mortal frame! WARTON. Prior also translated this little Ode, but with manifest inferiority to Pope. Pope was certainly indebted to Flatman. The plagiarism is palpable. Dr. Warton fpeaks with too much contempt of Crashawe, Herbert, &c. Some of Crashawe's ftrains are of a "higher mood;" and who can deny great merit to, the author of that natural and pleafing effufion, of which Mr. Ellis, in his valuable specimens of English Poetry, has selected, "I made a Pofy, as the day went by." Herbert was Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and afterwards Rector of Bemerton, near Salisbury. AN ESSAY ON CRITICIS M. Written in the Year MDCCIX*, • First advertised in the Spectator, N° 65. May 15, 1711. INTRODUCTION. That 'tis as great a fault to judge ill, as to write ill, and a more dangerous one to the public, ver. 1. That a true Taste is as rare to be found, as a true Genius, That most men are born with fome Tafte, but spoiled by falfe The Multitude of Critics, and causes of them, ver. 26 to 45. That we are to study our own Taste, and know the Limits of That therefore the Ancients are neceffary to be fludied by Reverence due to the Ancients, and praife of them, ver. 181, &c. Caufes hindering a true Judgment, 1. Pride, ver. 208. 2. Im- perfect Learning, ver. 215. 3. Judging by parts, and not by the whole, ver. 233 to 288. Critics in Wit, Language, Verfification, only, ver. 288. 305. 339, &c. 4. Being too hard to pleafe, or too apt to admire, ver. 384. 5. Partiality- too much love to a Sect,-to the Ancients or Moderns, ver. 324. 6. Prejudice or Prevention, ver. 408. 7. Singularity, ver. 424. 8. Inconftancy, ver. 430. 9. Party Spirit, ver. 452, &c. 10. Envy, ver. 466. Against Envy and |