have found time to have been great in poetry, painting, and music. Buononcini fet his ode and choruses, in the tragedy of Brutus, to mufic, which were performed at Cannons. He could hardly believe the reality of what people affected to feel from Handel's grand compofitions (as great as Orpheus produces in his St. Cecilian Ode), till he con-. fulted Arbuthnot, who affured him of the vaft powers of Handel. "I cannot help it, says Pope, according to the Biographia, at Lord Burlington's, where he often faw Handel, but what I hear pleases me no more than the airs of a common ballad!" It is furprising that Pope, who was bred up in the most religious of all religions, if the expreffion is admiffible, should be off his guard, and burlefque the first Pfalm; for which Blackmore, of pious and unpoetical memory, reproved him, and got for his pains a niche in the Dunciad. He was not in the contempt of Pope, till this unlucky prudery of his unwearied pen. For he defires, in a postscript of a letter to Mr. Hughes, in 1714, his humble fervice to Sir Richard Blackmore. Some ftanzas in one of D 3

his

his youthful letters border upon immodefty. But gallantry prevents a criticism on the laft line of the fourth Canto of the Rape of the Lock.

Pope modernifed the prologue to Chaucer's Wife of Bath (and probably the prologue that appears with the name of Betterton) which Dryden fays, he durft not adventure, because it was too licentious. Whatever may be in the original text, the tranflator has pretty well disguifed it. The old Crone, if not over modeft, is not very barefaced. If fhe can be excufed having fix hufbands, he could not well fay less of them. Chaucer, to the prefent race of readers, is what Ennius was to the Auguftan age. He wants to be read with a gloffary as much as Rowley's (or Chatterton's) poems, which now employ the conjectural criticism of fo many learned writers and will bewilder and mislead fo many readers. Though Mr. Tyrwhitt's Chaucer is fo much admired, few will study a dead and antiquarian language, for the fake of the prologue or tale of the Wife of Bath, or even the epic story of Palamon and Arcite. The tranflation in quef

tion

tion was fitter for the youth of Pope, than the old age of Dryden. Pope's verfion was published by Steele, in his Mifcellanies in 1714. Hughes, the agreeable poet and profe-writer, hearing this prologue was to be inferted, which, as the editor of his life fays, was inconfiftent with his ideas of decency, withdrew his name and his contribution of pieces. In one of the fupplemental volumes to Pope, is a letter addressed to him` by a free correfpondent, with a double entendre, intentionally introduced, to hold up to him the fort of converfation he always directed to Lady M. W. Montague, which all his friends complained of. His traditional warmth to that Lady, who in a few points resembled Homer's Penelope, and whom Pope poffibly might have in his eye, in his verfion,

(A woman lovelieft of the lovely kind, In body perfect, and compleat in mind) reminds the reader of a Captain Fish, fupporting the character of Mark Anthony, in Dryden's All for Love, performed at Blenheim in 1718, to amuse the Duke of Marlborough, and for which Bishop Hoadly wrote a prologue. He acted his part in fuch a man

ner, that Sir Richard Steele whispered the Bishop, "My Lord, I doubt this Fish is "Flesh." Pope was prevailed upon to expunge two lines from his Eloifa to Abelard, that were fitter to have come from the mouth of Julia (and breathed more ardour than belongs to Ladies in a cloyfter) than from the pen of the wife of Abelard.

All reformers fhould be better than other men. But it often happens, that many a verse and profe man, who has no character of his own to lofe, attempts, without the excufe of provocation, to take away that of another.

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"The hand that cannot raife a hovel, may be impious enough to demolish a temple," fays a living author. This is not meant to be applied to Pope. He had a reputation to lofe, and did not imagine, when he made his enemy lefs, he became bigger himfelf. He generally put his name to his writings of the fatyrical caft; and, as Dr. Brown expreffes it in a printed letter to our accomplished Lord of London, "had a name to put."-Pope, at one time, must have been upon the best terms of friendship with Lady Wortley, for he ad

dreffes

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dreffes feveral complimentary ftanzas to her; and he used to be frequently in the company of Lord Hervey. She fends him three very fpritely letters from Turkey, and tells him, fhe is reading the Iliad, with the more satisfaction, because she is on the spot where all the great actions in Homer are performed. "You are the three happiest poets I ever heard of, fays this fair correfpondent; one (Addison) a Secretary of State: the other (Congreve) enjoying leisure, with dignity, in two lucrative employments: and youwho have drawn the golden current of Pactolus to Twickenham." A memoir of this uncommon Lady would be an agreeable prefent to the reader. If the writer of this sketch were in poffeffion of materials, he would confider the putting them together a pleasing employment for his pen. There is no doubt of the authenticity of the letters that go by her name, at least no proof of their spurioufnefs has been adduced. The exactnefs of the relation is sometimes called in question. Our Embaffador, Sir James Porter, in his Obfervations, takes no notice of her book nor au

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thorities.