Yet a person of makes people humourists. genius is often expected to shew more discretion than another man; and this on account of that very vivacity, which is his greatest impediment. This happens for want of distinguishing betwixt the fanciful talents and the dry mathematical operations of the judgment, each of which indiscriminately give him the denomination of a man of genius. 12. An actor never gained a reputation by acting a bad play nor a musician by playing upon a bad instrument. 13. Poets seem to have fame, in lieu of most temporal advantages. They are too little formed for business, to be respected: too often feared or envied to be beloved. 14. Tully ever seemed an instance to me, how far a man devoid of courage, may be a spirited writer. 15. One would rather be a stump of laurel than the stump of a churchyard-yew-tree. 16. "Degere more feræ."* VIR. Vanbrugh seems to have had this of Virgil in his eye, when he introduces Miss Hoyden envying the liberty of a greyhound bitch. 17. There is a certain flimziness of poetry which seems expedient in a song. 18. Dido, as well as Desdemonat seems to have been a mighty admirer of strange achievements: "Heu! quibus ille jactatus fatis! quæ bella exhausta canebat! si mihi non," &c. This may shew that Virgil, Shakespeare, and Shaftesbury agreed in the same opinion. 19. It is often observed of wits, that they will lose their best friend for the sake of a joke. Candour may discover, that it is their greater degree of the love of fame, not the To lead the life of a beast; + Lord Shaftesbury. ment to mankind! less degree of their benevolence, which is the cause. 20. People in high or in distinguished life ought to have a greater circumspection in regard to their most trivial actions. For instance, I saw Mr. Pope-and what was he doing when you saw him? why, to the best of my memory, he was picking his nose. 21. Even Joe Miller, in his "Jests,", has an eye to poetical justice; generally gives the victory or turns the laugh on the side of merit. No small compli 22. To say a person writes a good style, is originally as pedantic an ex• pression, as to say he plays a good fiddle. 23. The first line of Virgil seems to patter like a hailstorm." Tityre, tu patulæ," &c. 24. The vanity and extreme self-love of the French is no where more observable than in their authors; and among these, in none more than Boileau; who, besides his rhodomontades, preserves every the most insipid reading in his notes, tho' he have removed it from the text for the sake of one ever so much bet ter. 25. The writer who gives us the best idea of what may be called the genteel in style and manner of writing, is, in my opinion, my Lord Shaftesbury. Then Mr. Addison and Dr. Swift. A plain narrative of any remarkable fact, emphatically related, has a more striking effect without the author's comment. 26. Long periods and short seem analogous to gothic and modern staircases: the former were of such a size as our heads and legs could barely command; the latter such that they might command half a dozen. I think nothing truly poetic, at least no poetry worth composing that does not strongly affect one's passions: and this is but slenderly effected by fables, allegories, and lies. "Incredulus odi,”—Hør. 27. A preface very frequently contains such a piece of criticism, as tends to countenance and establish the peculiarities of the piece. 28. I hate a style, as I do a garden, that is wholly flat and regular; that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality. 29. It is obvious to discover that imperfections of one kind have a visible tendency to produce perfections of another. Mr. Pope's bodily disadvantages must incline him to a more laborious cultivation of his talent, without which he foresaw that he must have languished in obscurity. The advantages of person are a good deal essential to popularity in the grave world as well as the gay. Mr. Pope, by an unwearied application to poetry, became not only the favourite of the learned, but also of the ladies. 30. Pope, I think, never once mentions Prior; tho' Prior speaks so handsomely of Pope in his " Alma." One might imagine that the latter, indebted as he was to the former for such numberles. beauties, should have readily repaid this poetical obligation. This can only be imputed to pride or party-cunning. In other words, to some modification of selfishness. 31. Virgil never mentions Horace, tho' indebted to him for two very well-natured compliments. 32. Pope seems to me the most correct writer since Virgil; the greatest genius only since Dryden. 33. No one was ever more fortunate than Mr. Pope in a judicious choice of his poetical subjects. 34. Pope's talent lay remarkably in what one may naturally enough term the condensation of thoughts. I think, no other English poet ever brought so much sense into the same number of lines with equal smoothness, ease, and poetical beauty. Let him who doubts of this peruse his "Essay on Man" with attention. Perhaps, this was a talent from which he could not easily have swerved: perhaps, he could not have sufficiently rarefied his thoughts to produce that flimsiness which is required in a ballad or love-song. His "Monster of Ragusa" and his "Translations from Chaucer" have some little tendency to invalidate this observation. 35. I durst not have censured Mr. Pope's writings in his life-time, you say. True. A writer surrounded with all his fame, engaging with another that is hardly known, is a man in armour attacking another in his night-gown and slippers. 36. Pope's religion is often found very advantageous to his descriptive talents, as it is, no doubt, embellished with the most pompous scenes and ostentatious imagery: for instance, "When from the censer clouds of," &c. 37. Pope has made the utmost advantage of alliteration, regulating it by the pause with the utmost success: "Die and endow a college or a cat," &c. &c. 38. Pope has any other poet that is 39. It is no doubt ex It is an easy kind of beauty. Dryden seems to have borrowed it from Spenser. published fewer foibles than equally voluminous. tremely possible to form an English prosody; but to a good ear it were almost superfluous, and to a bad one useless; this last being, I believe, never joined with a poetic genius. It may be joined with wit; it may be connected with sound judgment: but is surely never united with taste, which is the life and soul of poetry. 40. Rhymes, in elegant poetry, should consist of syllables that are long in pronunciation: such as " are, ear, ire, ore, your;" in which a nice ear will find more agreeableness than in these; ཡར་ས 41. There is a "gnat, net, knit, knot, nut.” vast beauty (to me) in using a word of a particular nature in the eighth and ninth syllables of an English verse. I mean, what is virtually a dactyl. For in stance, "And pikes, the tyrants of the wat❜ry plains." Let any person of an ear substitute “ liquid” instead of "wat'ry," and he will find the disadvantage. Mr. Pope (who has improved our versification through a judicious disposition of the pause) seems not enough aware of this beauty. 42. As to the frequent use of alliteration, it has probably had it's day. "I nunc & versus-tecum meditare," &c. Hor. nunc & pauperiem," &c. Virg. "O fortunatii, quorum jam mœnia," &c. Virg. Virg. Virgil, whose very metre appears to effect one's passions, was a master of this secret. 44. There are numbers in the world, who do not want sense, to make a figure so much as an opinion of their own abilities, to put them on recording their observations, and allowing them the same importance which they do to those which others print. 45. A good writer cannot, with the utmost study, produce some thoughts, which will flow from a bad one with ease and precipitation. The reverse is also true. A bad writer, &c. 46. "Great wits have short memories," is a proverb; and as such has undoubtedly some foundation in nature. The case seems to be, that men of genius forget things of common concern, unimportant facts, and circumstances, which |