laft. In one, the most valuable paffage is perhaps the Elogy on Good Senfe, and the other the End of the Duke of Buckingham.

The Epistle to Arbuthnot, now arbitrarily called the Prologue to the Satires, is a performance confifting, as it feems, of many fragments wrought into one defign, which by this union of scattered beauties contains more ftriking paragraphs than could probably have been brought together into an occafional work. As there is no ftronger motive to exertion than felf-defence, no part has more elegance, fpirit, or dignity, than the poet's vindication of his own character. The meaneft paffage is the fatire upon Sporus.

Of the two poems which derived their names from the year, and which are called the Epilogue to the Satires, it was very justly remarked by Savage, that the fecond was in the whole more ftrongly conceived, and more equally fupported, but that it had no fingle paffages equal to the contention in the firft for the dignity of Vice, and the celebration of the triumph of Corruption.

The Imitations of Horace feem to have been written as relaxations of his genius. This employment became his favourite by its facility; the plan was ready to his hand, and nothing was required but to accommodate as he could the fentiments of an old author to re

cent facts or familiar images; but what

is eafy is feldom excellent; fuch initations cannot give pleafure to common readers; the man of learning may be fometimes furprised and delighted by an unexpected parallel; but the comparifon requires knowledge of the original, which will likewife often detect ftrained applications. Between Roman images and English manners there will be an irreconcileable diffimilitude, and the work will be generally uncouth and partycoloured; neither original nor tranflated, neither ancient nor modern.

Pope had, in proportions very nicely adjusted to each other, all the qualities that conftitute genius. He had Inven tion, by which new trains of events are formed, and new fcenes of imagery dif played,

played, as in the Rape of the Lock; or extrinfick and adventitious embellishments and illuftrations are connected with a known fubject, as in the Effay on Criticism. He had Imagination, which ftrongly impreffes on the writer's mind, and enables him to convey to the reader the various forms of nature, incidents of life, and energies of paffion, as in his Eloifa, Windfor Foreft, and the Ethick Epiftles. He had Judgement, which felects from life or nature what the prefent purpose requires, and by separating the effence of things from its concomitants often makes the reprefentation more powerful than the reality: and he had colours of language always before him, ready to decorate his matter with

every grace of elegant expreffion, as when he accommodates his diction to the wonderful multiplicity of Homer's fentiments and descriptions.

Poetical expreffion includes found as well as meaning; Mufick, fays Dryden, is inarticulate poetry; among the excellencies of Pope, therefore, muft be mentioned the melody of his metre. By perufing the works of Dryden, he difcovered the most perfect fabrick of Englifh verfe, and habituated himself to that only which he found the best; in confequence of which reftraint his poetry has been cenfured as too uniformly mufical, and as glutting the ear with unvaried sweetness. I fufpect this objcction to be the cant of those who

judge