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If

Pope's ethical faith endeavoured to prop it up. Dr. Middleton defires Warburton to, advise Pope to be content with his explanation, and defend it with the arguments he has found out. The more this metaphyfical poem was furveyed, till the new commentator appeared, the more unfolid was its foundation thought to be. "It is more eafy, fays Mr. Wyndham, in his Tour through Wales, to destroy an hypothesis, than to fupport one." Warburton had not come at the right hour, the system would never have been half so well understood. It could not have refifted the fhock of time, and the fashion of new opinions. This champion preferved Pope from the fentence of condemnation. Dr. Trapp, a cold poet, but a warm and respectable critic, somewhere afferts, that," Pope's discoveries in the moral world entitle him to as much applaufe, as Newton's in the physical one." If this obfervation is not to be found in his works (but I think I read it whilst at the university), let it be confidered as a flip of memory, but not a perjury of the pen.

Warburton became mafter of the spirit of

Pope,

Pope, and the director of his opinions, as long as he lived. He trufted him with writing notes on his works, of which he gave him the profits and the cuftody of his fame.. It became the wifh of both, that they might go down hand in hand to pofterity. What is a little fingular, Warburton, amongst his earliest friends, who were Pope's enemies, had roughly and roundly afferted, that the Effay was collected" from the worst paffages of the worst authors." This was either unknown to Pope, or forgot or forgiven. He who fays a great deal, has always fomething to unfay. The younger Richardson afferts, "that Pope never dreamt of the fcheme he afterward adopted," and that he was afraid of the imputation of fatalifm and deifm.

Denina (in his Revolutions of Literature) fays, that no poet ever treated fo profound a fubject with fo much fublimity-but, that it is nothing more than a verfification of the fyftem of Leibnitz, as Lucretius's poem is that of Epicurus.

The Optimift in Voltaire is a banter on Pope's, or rather Leibnitz's pofition, “What

❝ ever

ever is, is right." This (relative to Pope) Richardfon fays, is of his own knowledge, and that he was privy to this Effay, from the firft fcratches, to the laft laboured manufcript im printed characters, which Pope gave him, on account of his trouble, in collation. But, the Commentary made the Poem confidered as pious and philofophical. Poetical, at least enough fo, it had been generally allowed. Had the great Warburton changed his optnion, or was it altered by intereft ? No matter; perhaps he was right at last. But furely friendfhip may corrupt the head, as certainly as money corrupt the heart.

The Bishop of Carlisle, in a preface to his late new edition of his tranflation of King's Origin of Evil (in oppofition to Dr. Warburton, who, while on a vifit at Cambridge, was ready to quarrel on the fubject) afferts, that Bolingbroke extracted the scheme of the beft, from the book of the Archbishop (whofe manuscript diary of his own life is faid to be extant) and that Lord Bathurst told him, he had feen these collected notions in the hand-writing of that Lord, lying by the fide

of

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of Pope, when he was writing the Effay on Man.

Of the Effay on Criticism, which, Warton fays, he has reason to believe, was first written in profe (according to a precept of Vida to his pupil), Pope's friend Richardson pronounces, that Pope always fpoke of it as an irregular collection of thoughts, thrown together, as they offered themselves, as Horace's Art of Poetry was, and written in imitation of that irregularity, which he even admired, and faid was beautiful. But Warbur ton, a Columbus in criticism, taught Pope a better leffon :

For learned commentators view;

In Homer; more than Homer knew.

In answer to a question proposed more than twenty years ago, in the Effay on the Life and Writings of Pope, What is there tran fcendently pathetic or fublime in Pope! Mr. Stockdale, an admirer of our Poet, only on this fide idolatry, thus replies : Many paffages throughout his works; his filial apostrophe to the age and infirmities of an affectionate mother-his Elegy to the Mémo

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1

ry of an unfortunate Lady-his Prologue to
Cato-his Eloifa to Abelard (which, Beattie
fays, is beyond all comparison more fublime
and more interesting than any of Ovid's Let-

included in

ter-writing Ladies) are all tranfcendently put home

pathetic; and afferts, that a fummer's-day.
would elapfe before we could read all that is
tranfcendently fublime in Pope." "It may
indeed be acknowledged (fays Dr. Hawkef-
worth) that Pope has difplayed his power to
excell in the fublime and pathetic, only oc
cafionally; but, it might as well be objected
to Milo's ftrength, that he carried an ox
but once, as to Pope's excellence in the pa-
thetic and fublime, that he did not always
difplay it." If Dr. Warton could have fore-
seen that he should have been called to fuch
fevere account, he would perhaps have
couched his question in terms more guarded.
It must be confeft, though the two editions
of his book found purchasers, yet he brought
over but few of his readers to his opinion.
But no reviewer of the fubject became fo per-
fonal as this champion; though Ruffhead is
not inclined to fhew him much mercy.
Another

G