lence, commonly spend life in one purfuit; for excellence is not often gained upon eafier terms. But to the particular fpecies of excellence men are directed, not by an afcendant planet or predominating humour, but by the firft book which they read, fome early converfation which they heard, or fome accident which excited ardour and emulation.

It must be at leaft allowed that this ruling Paffion, antecedent to reafon and obfervation, must have an object independent on human contrivance; for there can be no natural defire of artificial good. No man therefore can be born, in the ftrict acceptation, a lover of money; for he may be born where mo

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ney does not exift; nor can he be born, in a moral sense, a lover of his country; for fociety, politically regulated, is a state contradiftinguifhed from a ftate of nature; and any attention to that coalition of interefts which makes the happiness of a country, is poffible only to those whom enquiry and reflection have enabled to comprehend it..

This doctrine is in itself pernicious as well as falfe: its tendency is to produce the belief of a kind of moral predeftination, or over-ruling principle which cannot be refifted; he that admits it, is prepared to comply with every defire that caprice or opportunity fhall excite, and to flatter himfelf that he fubmits only to the lawful dominion of Nature,

in obeying the refiftless authority of his

ruling Pafion.

Pope has formed his theory with so little fkill, that, in the examples by which he illuftrates and confirms it, he has confounded paffions, appetites, and habits.

To the Characters of Men he added foon after, in an Epiftle fuppofed to have been addreffed to Martha Blount, but which the laft edition has taken from her, the Characters of Women. This poem, which was laboured with great diligence, and in the author's opinion with great fuccefs, was neglected at its first publication, as the commentator fuppofes, because the publick was informed by an advertisement, that it

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contained no Character drawn from the life; an affertion which Pope probably did not expect or wish to have been believed, and which he foon gave his readers fufficient reafon to diftruft, by telling them in a note, that the work was imperfect, because part of his fubject was Vice too high to be yet expofed.

The time however foon came, in which it was fafe to display the Dutchefs of Marlborough under the name of Atoffa; and her character was inferted with no great honour to the writer's gratitude.

He published from time to time (between 1730 and 1740) Imitations of different poems of Horace, generally with his name, and once as was fufpected without

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without it. What he was upon moral principles ashamed to own, he ought to have fuppreffed. Of thefe pieces it is useless to settle the dates, as they had feldom much relation to the times, and perhaps had been long in his hands.

This mode of imitation, in which the ancients are familiarifed, by adapting their fentiments to modern topicks, by making Horace fay of Shakspeare what he originally faid of Ennius, and accommodating his fatires on Pantolabus and Nomentanus to the flatterers and prodigals of our own time, was firft practifed in the reign of Charles the Second by Oldham and Rochefter, at least I remember no inftances more ancient. It is a kind of middle compofition between

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