him that his work, as it flood, was a delicious little thing, and gave him no encouragement to retouch it.

This has been too haftily confidered as an inftance of Addison's jealoufy; for as he could not guefs the conduct of the new defign, or the poffibilities of pleasure comprised in a fiction of which there had been no examples, he might very reasonably and kindly perfuade the author to acquiefce in his own profperity, and forbear an attempt which he confidered as an unneceffary hazard.

Addison's counsel was happily rejected. Pope forefaw the future efflorefcence of imagery then budding in his mind, and resolved to spare no art, or industry of cultivation.. The foft

luxuriance of his fancy was already fhooting, and all the gay varieties of diction were ready at his hand to colour and embellish it.

His attempt was juftified by its fuccefs. The Rape of the Lock ftands forward, in the claffes of literature, as the moft exquifite example of ludicrous poetry. Berkley congratulated him upon the difplay of powers more truly poetical than he had fhewn before; with ele gance of description and juftness of cepts, he had now exhibited boundless fertility of invention.

pre

He always confidered the intertexture of the machinery with the action as his most successful exertion of poetical, art. He indeed could never afterwards pro

duce

duce any thing of fuch unexampled excellence. Thofe performances, which ftrike with wonder, are combinations of fkilful genius with happy cafualty; and it is not likely that any felicity, like the discovery of a new race of preternatural agents, fhould happen twice to the fame

man.

Of this poem the author was, I think, allowed to enjoy the praife for a long time without disturbance. Many years afterwards Dennis publifhed fome remarks upon it, with very little force, and with no effect; for the opinion of the publick was already fettled, and it was no longer at the mercy of criticifm.

3

About

About this time he publifhed the Temple of Fame, which, as he tells Steele in their correfpondence, he had written two years before; that is, when he was only twenty-two years old, an early time of life for fo much learning and fo much obfervation as that work exhibits.

On this poem Dennis afterwards pub

lifhed fome remarks, of which the most reasonable is, that fome of the lines reprefent motion as exhibited by fculpture.

Of the Epiftle from Eloifa to Abelard, I do not know the date. His first inclination to attempt a compofition of that tender kind arofe, as Mr. Savage told me, from his perufal of Prior's Nutbrown Maid, How much he has furpaffed Prior's work it is not neceffary

to

to mention, when perhaps it may be faid with juftice, that he has excelled every compofition of the fame kind. The mixture of religious hope and refignation gives an elevation and dignity to disappointed love, which images merely natural cannot beftow. The gloom of a convent ftrikes the imagination with far greater force than the folitude of a grove.

This piece was, however, not much his favourite in his latter years, though I never heard upon what principle he flighted it.

In the next year (1713) he published Windfor Foreft; of which part was, as he relates, written at fixteen, about the fame time as his Paftorals, and the lat

ter