it. Dryden is read with frequent aftonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight.

This parallel will, I hope, when it is well confidered, be found juft; and if the reader should fufpect me, as I fufpect myfelf, of fome partial fondnefs for the memory of Dryden, let him not too haftily condemn me; for meditation and enquiry may, perhaps, fhew him the

reasonablenefs of my

determination.

THE

THE Works of Pope are now to be diftinctly examined, not fo much with attention to flight faults or petty beauties, as to the general character and effect of each performance.

It seems natural for a young poet to initiate himself by Paftorals, which, not profeffing to imitate real life, require no experience, and, exhibiting only the fimple operation of unmingled paffions, admit no fubtle reafoning or deep enquiry. Pope's Paftorals are not however composed but with close thought; they

S

they have reference to the times of the day, the feasons of the year, and the periods of human life. The laft, that which turns the attention upon age and death, was the author's favourite. To tell of difappointment and mifery, to thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of the poets. His preference was probably juft. I wish, however, that his fondnefs had not overlooked a line in which the Zephyrs are made to lament in filence.

To charge thefe Paftorals with want of invention, is to require what never Twas intended. The imitations are fo ambitiously frequent, that the writer evidently

dently means rather to fhew his literature than his wit. It is furely fufficient for an author of fixteen not only to be able to copy the poems of antiquity with judicious felection, but to have obtained fufficient power of language, and kill in metre, to exhibit a feries of verification, which had in English poetry no precedent, nor has fince had an imitation.

The defign of Windfor Foreft is evidently derived from Cooper's Hill, with fome attention to Waller's poem on The Park; but Pope cannot be denied to excel his mafters in variety and elegance, and the art of interchanging defcription, narrative, and morality. The objection made by Dennis is the want of

plan, of a regular fubordination of parts terminating in the principal and original defign. There is this want in most defcriptive poems, because the fcenes, which they must exhibit fucceffively, are all fubfifting at the fame time, and therefore the order in which they are fhewn muft by ncceffity be arbitrary, and more is not to be expected from the last part than from the firft. The attention, therefore, which cannot be detained by suspense, must be excited by diverfity, fuch as this poem offers to its reader.

But the defire of diverfity may be too much indulged; the parts of Windfor Foreft which deferve least praise, are thofe which were added to enliven the

fillness of the scene, the appearance

of

Father