with those of the Rape of the Lock, the letter from Eliofa to Abelard, and the Effay on Man! It may be fairly confeffed, that poetry is not an effential article in the commerce or support of life. It is only the treafure and delight of a few. Like gold, it can only belong to the fortunate, who can afford to keep it to themselves; but profe, like money in small change, is every moment neceffary to carry on the ordinary affairs and general purposes of the world.

I availed myself of a recess during the heat of the fummer, to give fcope to my old inclination, to fit down in order to recollect what I had read or been told concerning Mr. Pope. What the Effay is good for, now it is finished, is not for the writer to decide. Perhaps it may be thought rather an effusion, than a compofition. He did not know, when he took up the pen, whether it would be long or fhort. It was meant to be written from memory, with rapidity, and without taking down authors from their fhelves. The pen has not written intentiontial falfehoods. Indeed, there can be no incite

ment,

ment, at this distance of time, and on the present fubject, for corrupt partiality, or base malevolence, quorum caufas procul habeo. This sketch proved too large for one fitting. The writer became more and more in love with his fubject, and his pen ran away with him. He returned to it again, and again, and has compleated his intention. He has fhewn it to fome friends, who have not faid enough against it to prevent its publication. It is now laid, very respectfully, at the feet `of the public.

This ground is trodden so bare, that no verdure can easily spring up. What has been performed by the claffical Hurd, the induftrious Ruffhead, and thofe captivating writers, Warton and Johnson, can hardly admit or require to be added to. The last author comes to Biography with all the talents of Longinus and Quintilian, and with all the entertaining power of anecdote to enrich his volume. Sero venientibus offa. It is lawful, according to one of the oldest cuftoms and privileges in the world, to glean what one can, after the rich harveft of others.

4

No poet of our times or nation has laid us under fo many obligations as Mr. Pope. He has contributed highly to polish, to make more durable, and to fix the English language. But, a living language is incapable of being compleatly fixed. It is like the river in Horace, which never ftands ftill, and, in the reprefentative verfification of the excellent Cowley, "which runs, and as it runs, for ever fhall run on." He has done a great deal to improve our taste,

morals, as far as can be

and to correct our done by the magic

of words. Nay, his fatires are called the glorious fupplement of our laws. The attraction of his poetry verifies the line of Herbert, "a verfe may catch him whom a fermon flies." It makes nothing against him, that from the moment our fon of Apollo refolved to brandish his pen, he determined to dip it into Pactolus as well as Helicon.

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Pope, as Lord Clarendon fays of (the ever memorable) Hales of Eaton, was one of the least men in the kingdom; who adds of Chillingworth, that he was of a ftature little fuperior to him; and, that it was an age,

in

in which there were many great and wonderful men of that fize. Enough might be found of Pope's contemporaries, who were below the common ftandard, and whofe talents of all kinds were equal to the most celebrated in the last century. But I have no defire to dignify a remark with examples of this fort, as the noble historian has done. Our Poet is Dick Diftich, the prefident of the little club, in his own well-written paper in the Guardian (rivalled, but not excelled by Addifon's inftitution of a Club of tall men), who has entertained so just a sense (he fays) of the ftature, as to go generally in black, that he may appear yet lefs. Nay, to that perfection is he arrived, that he floops as he walks. The figure of the man, continues he jocofely, is odd enough; he is a lively little creature, with long arms and legs. A spider is no ill emblem of him. He has been taken at a distance for a small wind-mill. He inherited his deformity from his father, who turns out at last, from the information of Mrs. Racket, his relation, to have been a linen-draper in the Strand.

My friend, this shape which you and Curll

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admire,

"Came not from Ammon's fon, but from my "fire;"

as he expreffes himself, in the first edition of his epistle to Arbuthnot.

He was protuberant behind and before, in the words of his laft biographer. But he carried a mind in his face, as a reverenced perfon once expreffed himself of a fingular countenance. He had a brilliant eye, which pervaded every thing at a glance. This disadvantageoufnefs of figure he converted, as Lord Bacon expreffes it, "into a perpetual fpur to rescue and deliver himself from scorn, and to watch the weakness of others, that he might have fomething to repay them." Some of his earliest opponents had the ill-natured rashness to exhibit "the libell'd person and the pictur'd shape." Pope, who was tremblingly alive all o'er, returned this difingenuous attack, and made them pay dear for their perfonal abuse. He was as refentful of an imputation of the roundness of his back, as Marshal Luxemburg is reported to have been

on