"a full view; so that it may be said that Homer is "the painter who best knew how to employ the shades "and lights. The second comparison is equally un"just. How could Mr. Pope say, "that one can only "discover seeds, and the first productions of every "kind in the Iliad?" Every beauty is there to such "an amazing perfection, that the following ages could "add nothing to those of any kind; and the ancients "have always proposed Homer as the most perfect "model in every kind of poetry.

"The third comparison is composed of the errors "of the two former. Homer had certainly an incom"parable fertility of invention, but his fertility is al"ways checked by that just sense which made him 66 reject every superfluous thing which his vast ima"gination could offer, and to retain only what was necessary and useful. Judgment guided the hand of "this admirable gardener, and was the pruning-hook ❝he employed to lop off every useless branch."

Thus far Madam Dacier differs in her opinion from Mr. Pope concerning Homer; but these remarks, which we have just quoted, partake not at all of the nature of criticism; they are mere assertion. Pope had declared Homer to abound with irregular beau. ties. Dacier has contradicted him, and asserted, that all his beauties are regular; but no reason is assigned by either of these mighty geniuses in support of their

opinions, and the reader is left in the dark as to the real truth. If he is to be guided by the authority of a name only, no doubt the argument will preponderate in favour of our countryman. The French lady then proceeds to answer some observations which Mr. Pope made upon her Remarks on the Iliad, which she performs with a warmth that generally attends writers of her sex. Mr. Pope, however, paid more regard to this fair antagonist than any other critic upon his works. He confessed that he had received great helps from her, and only thought she had (through a prodigious and almost superstitious fondness for Homer) endeavoured to make him appear without any fault or weakness, and stamp a perfection on his works which is no where to be found. He wrote her a very obliging letter, in which he confessed himself exceedingly sorry that he ever should have displeased so excellent a wit; and she, on the other hand, with a goodness and frankness peculiar to her, protested to forgive it; so that there remained no animosities between those two great admirers and translators of Homer.

Mr. Pope, by his successful translation of the Iliad, as we have before remarked, drew upon him the envy and raillery of a whole tribe of writers. Though he did not esteem any particular man amongst his enemies of consequence enough to provoke an answer,

yet, when they were considered collectively, they offered excellent materials for a general satire. This satire he planned and executed with so extraordinary a mastery, that it is by far the most complete poem of our author's; it is entitled the Dunciad, and discovers more invention, and a higher effort of genius, than any other production of his. The hint was taken from Mr. Dryden's Mac Flecknoe; but as it is more general, so it is more pleasing.

The Dunciad has been so universally read, that we reckon it superfluous to give any further account of it here; and it would be an unpleasing task to trace all the provocations and resentments which were mutually discovered upon this occasion. Mr. Pope was of opinion that, next to praising good writers, there was a merit in exposing bad ones; though it does not hold infallibly true that each person stigmatized as a dunce was genuinely so. Something must be allowed to personal resentment. Mr. Pope was a man of keen passions; he felt an injury strongly, retained a long remembrance of it, and could very pungently repay it. Some of the gentlemen, however, who had been more severely lashed than the rest, meditated a revenge which redounds but little to their honour. They either intended to chastise him corporally, or gave it out that they had really done so, in order to bring

shame upon Mr. Pope, which, if true, could only bring shame upon themselves.

The "Dunciad," in the complete edition, is addressed to Dr. Swift. Of the notes, part were written by Dr. Arbuthnot; and an apologetical letter was prefixed, signed by Cleland, but supposed to have been written by Pope.

After this general war upon Dulness, he seems to have indulged himself awhile in tranquillity; but his subsequent productions prove that he was not idle. He published (1731) a poem on 66 Taste," in which he very particularly and severely criticises the house, the furniture, the gardens, and the entertainments of Timon, a man of great wealth, and little taste. By Timon he was universally supposed, and by the Earl of Burlington, to whom the poem is addressed, was privately said to mean the Duke of Chandos; a man perhaps too much delighted with pomp and show, but of a temper kind and beneficent, and who had consequently the voice of the public in his favour.

A violent outcry was therefore raised against the ingratitude and treachery of Pope, who was said to have been indebted to the patronage of Chandos for a thousand pounds, and who gained the opportunity of insulting him by the kindness of his invitation.

The receipt of the thousand pounds Pope publicly denied; but from the reproach which the attack on a

character so amiable brought upon him, he tried all means of escaping. The name of Cleland was again employed in an apology, by which no man was satisfied; and he was at last reduced to shelter his temerity behind dissimulation, and endeavour to make that disbelieved which he never had confidence openly to deny. He wrote an exculpatory letter to the duke, which was answered with great magnanimity, as by a man who accepted his excuse without believing his professions. He said, that to have ridiculed his taste,. or his buildings, had been an indifferent action in another man; but that in Pope, after the reciprocal kindness that had been exchanged between them, it had been less easily excused.

The following year deprived him of Gay, a man whom he had known early, and whom he seemed to love with more tenderness than any other of his literary friends. Pope was now forty-four years old; an age at which the mind begins less easily to admit new confidence, and the will to grow less flexible, and when, therefore, the departure of an old friend is very acutely felt.

In the next year he lost his mother, not by an unexpected death, for she had lasted to the age of ninetythree; but she did not die unlamented. The filial piety of Pope was in the highest degree amiable and exemplary; his parents had the happiness of living