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therefore it was neceffary to find other enemies with other names, at whose expence he might divert the publick.

In this defign there was petulance and malignity enough; but I cannot think it very criminal. An author places himfelf uncalled before the tribunal of Criticism, and folicits fame at the hazard of difgrace. Dulnefs or deformity are not culpable in themselves, but may be very juftly reproached when they pretend to the honour of wit or the influence of beauty. If bad writers were to pass without reprehenfion, what should reftrain them? impune diem confumpferit ingens Telepbus; and upon bad writers only will cenfure have much effect. The fatire which brought Theobald and Moore

Moore into contempt, dropped impotent from Bentley, like the javelin of Priam thrown at Neoptolemus.

All truth is valuable, and fatirical criticism may be confidered as useful when it rectifies error and improves judgement; he that refines the publick taste is a publick benefactor.

The beauties of this poem are well known; its chief fault is the groffness of its images. Pope and Swift had an unnatural delight in ideas phyfically impure, fuch as every other tongue utters with unwillingness, and of which every ear fhrinks from the mention.

But even this fault, offenfive as it is, may be forgiven for the excellence of other paffages; fuch as the formation and

diffolu

diffolution of Moore, the account of the Traveller, the misfortune of the Florist, and the crouded thoughts and stately numbers which dignify the concluding paragraph.

The alterations which have been made in the Dunciad, not always for the better, require that it should be published, as in this edition, with all its variations.

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The Effay on Man was a work of labour and long confideration, but certainly not the happieft of Pope's performances. The fubject is perhaps not very proper for poetry, and the poet 'was not fufficiently mafter of his fubject; metaphyfical morality was a new study, he was proud of his acquifitions, and,

fuppofing himself mafter of great fecrets, was in hafte to teach what he had not learned. Thus he tells us, in the fift Epiftle, that from the nature of the Supreme Being may be deduced an order of beings fuch as mankind, because Infinite Excellence can do only what is beft. He finds out that all the queftion is whether man be in a wrong place.. Surely if, according to the poet's, Leibnitian reasoning, we may infer that man ought to be, only because he is, we may allow that his place is the right place, because he has it.. Supreme Wisdom is not less infallible in difpofing than in creating. But what is meant by fomewhere and place, and wrong place, it had

been

been vain to afk Pope, who probably had never afked himself.

Having exalted himself into the chair of wisdom, he tells us much that every man knows, and much that he does not know himself; that we fee but little, and that the order of the univerfe is beyond our comprehenfion; an opinion not very uncommon; and that there is a chain of fubordinate beings from infi nite to nothing, of which himself and his readers are equally ignorant. But he gives us one comfort, which, without his help, he fuppofes unattainable, the pofition that though we are fools, yet God is wife.

This Effay affords an egregious inftance of the predominance of genius,

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