ture. There would be no thieves nor ftolen goods, experience tells us, if there were no receivers; and no fcurrilous writings, nor libellous prints, would be published, to corrupt the ear, or to gratify the impudence of the eye, if there were no purchasers. Atterbury approved fo highly of the character of Atticus, for which Addison was made to fit, that he advifed Pope to go on, now he had found out which way his genius pointed. But Arbuthnot, with his dying breath, defired him to be lefs fevere, to reform, and not to chastise; and, to paraphrafe his meaning, to laugh only at folly, and to be content to put vice out of countenance with Horace, rather than to ftab like Juvenal. He was preparing for Euthanafia when he wrote this letter. Pope returned him for anfwer, that he differed with him in opinion in his mode of correcting the world, and that he must go on his own way, for the vice and the man were infeparable. Yet, in the advertisement to his fatire, addreffed to Arbuthnot, he tells the reader, it was owing to his friend's intreaties, he did not make fo free with the names

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of his enemies as they had done with his.
There are few fictitious names in Pope; none
perhaps that the reader cannot apply to the
right owners. It is obferved, that in the
Dunciad, he often only gave the initial letter :
but the next edition ventured upon the name
at full length. Swift, in his Verfes on his
own Death, pretends he did not deal in per-
fonal abuse-Credat Judæus Apella, non ego.
The enfuing quotation breathes fo much hu-
manity, and wants nothing but truth to re-
commend it, that it is worth the attention of
future fatirifts:

"Yet malice never was his aim,
«He lash'd the vice, but spar'd the name :
"His fatire points at no defect,
"But what all mortals may correct.'

If Pope's temper had not led him to perfo
nality, the obfervation of Cleland (whom he
describes as a man of sense and of integrity,
and, to be very parenthetic, who was the Will
Honeycomb of the Spectator's club), in a
letter to him, "that all fuch writings and dif-

courfes as touch no man, will mend no man, might have given the biass to his The

pen.

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perfonalities in his fatires multiplied the fale. The portraits of Sporus, Bufo, Clodius, Timon, and Atoffa, were purchafed by every body. When he made a declaration, respecting the characters in one of his best performances, that no real perfons were intended, it checked the reader and the edition. The public would not embrace a cloud for Juno. When he had his enemies in his power, he did not fpare them. He received many letters from those who had offended him, containing either proteftations of innocence, or imploring pardon. But juftice was to be fatisfied. If there is not too much pomp in the allufion, may it not be faid, that Pope, when he got his enemies at his feet, behaved as the tyrannicides of Kouli Khan, who followed their words up with blows, and, whilst they were dispatching him, cried out, “You have shewn no mercy; and you fhall

66 have no mercy

Many of thofe who affected to be lefs hurt, carried their concealed wounds to the grave. Even those who wanted to put on a laugh, or, like Cibber, undertook to reply, and refolved

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folved to have the laft word, generally came off with the worst; and had no reason, in the Warburtonian language, to be " pleafed with their situation in the long run." Even the pofterity of thofe he dragged before his tribunal, still read his poetry with fome pain, and would expunge the peccant paffages. Their punishment and difgrace remain on a record as indelible as on adamant, though their delinquency does not appear. Like the fpot of blood on Lady Macbeth, the words cannot be washed away. As Sir C. H. Williams, a great wit and a great courtier, was coming down the Thames, with a well-known literary gentleman who lives upon its poetical banks, he pointed to Pope's house, where the Bard was lying in his fhrowd, and cried out, in the words of Falstaff, "I am afraid of the gunpowder Percy, though he be dead."

The verfion of Homer, according to our laft critic, became, after a little practice, less difficult; and he gives reafons to prove the tranflator able to do justice to the great original, and defends the mode of his tranflation. Pope fet himself a poetical task, to tranf

tranflate, on an average, fo many lines a daylike the navigator, who reckons his veffel will compleat her voyage at a set time, if The continues to fail at fo many knots an hour, unobstructed by ftorms or calms. Lyttelton (as yet without a title) asked Pope one morning, how he had flept during the night. "I have not had a wink of fleep, fays our poet; but I have fared as well, for I have tranflated forty lines of Homer." Lyttelton (now ennobled) thinks the translation performed, not fo much in the manner of Homer, nor agreeable to the fenfe, in all places, as might perhaps be defired.

Mr. Stockdale affirms, "that every im-[ partial judge must allow, that Pope in general excells his original, in propriety, in beauty, and in fire; and, in fhort, that he improved on Homer; and justly pronounces, that if he had only favoured the world with his tranflation of the Iliad, it would have ranked him with our great and celebrated poets." Pope was affifted by the living and the dead. He ftood upon the shoulders of his predeceffors, and he had literary pioneers