This is a very curious and entertaining miscellany of critical remarks and literary history. Though the book promises nothing but observations on the writings of Pope, yet no opportunity is neglected of introducing the character of any other writer, or the mention of any performance or event in which learning is interested. From Pope, however, he always takes his hint, and to Pope he returns again from his digressions. The facts which he mentions though they are seldom anecdotes in a rigorous sense, are often such as are very little known, and such as will delight more readers than naked criticism.

As he examines the works of this great poet in an order nearly chronological, he necessarily begins with his pastorals, which considered as representations of any kind of life, he very justly censures;2 for there is in them a mixture of Grecian and English, of ancient and modern images. Windsor is coupled with Hybla, and Thames with Pactolus.3 He then compares some passages which Pope has imitated or translated with the imitation or version, and gives the preference to the originals, perhaps not always upon convincing arguments.

Theocritus makes his lover wish to be a bee, that he might creep among the leaves that form the chaplet of his mistress. Pope’s enamoured swain longs to be made the captive bird that sings in his fair one’s bower, that she might listen to his songs, and reward them with her kisses. The critic prefers the image of Theocritus as more wild, more delicate, and more uncommon.4

It is natural for a lover to wish that he might be any thing that could come near to his lady. But we more naturally desire to be that which she fondles and caresses, than that which she would avoid, at least would neglect. The superior delicacy of Theocritus I cannot discover, nor can indeed find, that either in the one or the other image there is any want of delicacy. Which of the two images was less common in the time of the poet who used it, for on that consideration the merit of novelty depends, I think it is now out of any critic’s power to decide.

He remarks, I am afraid with too much justice, that there is not a single new thought in the pastorals, and with equal reason declares, that their chief beauty consists in their “correct and musical versification, which has so influenced the English ear, as to render every moderate rhymer harmonious.”5

In his examination of the Messiah, he justly observes some deviations from the inspired author, which weaken the imagery, and dispirit the expression.6

On Windsor-forest, he declares, I think without proof, that descriptive poetry was by no means the excellence of Pope;7 he draws this inference from the few images introduced in this poem, which would not equally belong to any other place. He must inquire whether Windsor-Forest has in reality any thing peculiar.

“The stag-chace is not,” he says, “so full, so animated, and so circumstantiated as Somerville’s.”8 Barely to say, that one performance is not so good as another, is to criticise with little exactness. But Pope has directed, that we should “in every work regard the author’s end.”9 The stag-chace is the main subject of Somerville, and might therefore be properly dilated into all its circumstances; in Pope it is only incidental, and was to be dispatched in a few lines.

He makes a just observation, “that the description of the external beauties of nature, is usually the first efforta of a young genius, before he hath studied nature and passions. Some of Milton’s most early as well as most exquisite pieces are his Lycidas, l’Allegro, and Il penseroso, if we may except his ode on the nativity of Christ, which is indeed prior in order of time, and in which a penetrating critic might have observed the seeds of that boundless imagination, which was one day to produce the Paradise Lost.”1

Mentioning Thomson and other descriptive poets, he remarks that writers fail in their copies for want of acquaintance with originals, and justly ridicules those who think they can form just ideas of valleys, mountains, and rivers in a garret of the Strand.2 For this reason I cannot regret with this author, that Pope laid aside his design of writing American pastorals;3 for as he must have painted scenes which he never saw, and manners he never knew, his performance, though it might have been a pleasing amusement of fancy, would have exhibited no representation of nature or of life.

After the pastorals, the critic considers the lyric poetry of Pope, and dwells longest on the ode on St. Cecilia’s day, which he, like the rest of mankind, places next to that of Dryden, and not much below it. He remarks after Mr. Spence, that the first stanza is a perfect concert.4 The second he thinks a little flat; he justly commends the fourth, but without notice of the best line in that stanza, or in the poem.

That the measure is the same in both passages must be confessed, and both poets perhaps chose their numbers properly; for they both meant to express a kind of airy hilarity. The two passions of merriment and exultation are undoubtedly different; they are as different as a gambol and a triumph, but each is a species of joy; and poetical measures have not in any language been so far refined, as to provide for the subdivisions of passion. They can only be adapted to general purposes, but the particular and minuter propriety must be sought only in the sentiment and language. Thus the numbers are the same in Colin’s Complaint,6 and in the ballad of Darby and Joan,7 though in one sadness is represented, and in the other only tranquillity; so the measure is the same of Pope’s Unfortunate Lady and the Praise of Voiture.

He observes very justly, that the odes both of Dryden and Pope conclude unsuitably and unnaturally with epigram.8

He then spends a page upon Mr. Handel’s music to Dryden’s ode, and speaks of him with that regard, which he has generally obtain’d among the lovers of sound. He finds something amiss in the air “With ravished ones,” but has overlooked or forgotten the grossest fault in that composition, which is that in this line,

Revenge, revenge Timotheus cries, he has laid much stress upon the two latter words, which are meerly words of connexion, and ought in music to be considered as parenthetical.9

From this ode is struck out a digression on the nature of odes, and the comparative excellence of the ancients and moderns. He mentions the chorus which Pope wrote for the duke of Buckingham, and thence takes occasion to treat of the chorus of the ancients.1 He then comes to another ode of “The dying Christian to his soul,” in which finding an apparent imitation of Flatman, he falls into a pleasing and learned speculation on the resembling passages to be found in different poets.2

He mentions, with great regard, Pope’s ode on solitude, written when he was but twelve years old, but omits to mention the poem on silence, composed, I think, as early, with much greater elegance of diction, music of numbers, extent of observation, and force of thought.3 If he had happened to think on Baillet’s chapter of Enfans celebres,4 he might have made, on this occasion, a very entertaining dissertation on early excellence.

He comes next to the Essay on Criticism, the stupendous performance of a youth not yet twenty years old, and after having detailed the felicities of condition, to which he imagines Pope to have owed his wonderful prematurity of mind, he tells us that he is well informed, this essay was first written in prose: There is nothing improbable in the report, nothing indeed but what is more likely than the contrary; yet I cannot forbear to hint to this writer and all others the danger and weakness of trusting too readily to information. Nothing but experience could evince the frequency of false information, or enable any man to conceive that so many groundless reports should be propagated as every man of eminence may hear of himself. Some men relate what they think as what they know; some men of confused memories and habitual inaccuracy ascribe to one man what belongs to another; and some talk on without thought or care. A few men are sufficient to broach falshoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relators.

He proceeds on examining passage after passage of this essay; but we must pass over all these criticisms to which we have not something to add or to object, or where this author does not differ from the general voice of mankind. We cannot agree with him in his censure of the comparison of a student advancing in science with a traveller passing the Alps, which is, perhaps, the best simile in our language; that in which the most exact resemblance is traced between things in appearance utterly unrelated to each other.5 That “the last line conveys” no new idea is not true, it makes particular what was before general.6 Whether the description which he adds from another author be, as he says, more “full and striking,” than that of Pope, is not to be inquired.7 Pope’s description is relative, and can admit no greater length than is usually allowed to a simile, nor any other particulars than such as form the correspondence.

“Unvaried rhymes,” says this writer, “highly disgust readers of a good ear.”8 It is surely not the ear, but the mind that is offended; the fault rising from the use of common rhymes, is that by reading the past line the second may be guessed, and half the composition loses the grace of novelty.

On occasion of the mention of an alexandrine, the critic observes, that “the alexandrine may be thought a modern measure, but that Robert of Gloucester’s verse is an alexandrine, with the addition of two syllables; and that Sternhold and Hopkins translated the psalms in the same measure of fourteen syllables, though they are printed otherwise.”9

This seems not to be accurately conceived or expressed: an alexandrine, with the addition of two syllables, is no more an alexandrine, than with the detraction of two syllables. Sternhold and Hopkins did generally write in the alternate measure of eight and six syllables; but Hopkins commonly rhymed the first and third, Sternhold only the second and fourth: So that Sternhold may be considered as writing couplets of long lines; but Hopkins wrote regular stanzas. From the practice of printing the long lines of fourteen syllables in two short linesb arose the licence of some of our poets, who, though professing to write in stanzas, neglect the rhymes of the first and third lines.

Pope has mentioned Petronius among the great names of criticism, as the remarker justly observes without any critical merit.1 It is to be suspected, that Pope had never read his book, and mentioned him on the credit of two or three sentences which he had often seen quoted, imagining that where there was so much there must necessarily be more. Young men in haste to be renowned too frequently talk of books which they have scarcely seen.

The revival of learning, mentioned in this poem, affords an opportunity of mentioning the chief periods of literary history, of which this writer reckons five, that of Alexander, of Ptolemy Philadelphus, of Augustus, of Leo the tenth, of queen Anne.2

These observations are concluded with a remark which deserves great attention: “In no polished nation, after criticism has been much studied, and the rules of writing established, has any very extraordinary book ever appeared.”3

The Rape of the Lock was always regarded by Pope as the highest production of his genius. On occasion of this workc the history of the comic heroic is given, and we are told, that it descended from Tassonid to Boileau, from Boileau to Garth, and from Garth to Pope.4 Garth is mentioned perhaps with too much honour; but all are confessed to be inferior to Pope. There is in his remarks on this work no discovery of any latent beauty, nor any thing subtle or striking; he is indeed commonly right, but has discussed no difficult question.

The next pieces to be considered are the Verses to the Memory of an unfortunate Lady, the Prologue to Cato, and Epilogue to Jane Shore. The first piece he commends; on occasion of the second he digresses, according to his custom, into a learned dissertation on tragedies, and compares the English and French with the Greek stage. He justly censures Cato for want of action and of characters, but scarcely does justice to the sublimity of some speeches and the philosophical exactness in the sentiments.5 “The simile of mount Atlas, and that of the Numidian traveller smothered in the sands, are indeed, in character,” says the critic, “but sufficiently obvious.”6 The simile of the mountain is indeed common, but that of the traveller I do not remember;e that it is obvious, is easy to say, and easy to deny.——Many things are obvious when they are taught.

He proceeds to criticise the other works of Addison, till the epilogue calls his attention to Rowe, whose character he discusses in the same manner with sufficient freedom and sufficient candor.

The translation of the epistle of Sappho to Phaon is next considered;7 but Sappho and Ovid are more the subjects of this disquisition than Pope. We shall therefore pass over it to a piece of more importance, the epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, which may justly be regarded as one of the works on which the reputation of Pope will stand in future times.8

The critic pursues Eloisa through all the changes of passion, produces the passages of her letters to which any allusion is made, and intersperses many agreeable particulars and incidental relations. There is not much profundity of criticism, because the beauties are sentiments of nature, which the learned and the ignorant feel alike.9 It is justly remarked by him, that the wish of Eloisa, for the happy passage of Abelard into the other world, is formed according to the ideas of mystic devotion.

These are the pieces examined in this volume; whether the remaining part of the work will be one volume or more, perhaps the writer himself cannot yet inform us.1 This piece however is a complete work, so far as it goes, and the writer is of opinion, that he has dispatched the chief part of his task; for he ventures to remark, that the reputation of Pope, as a poet, among posterity, will be principally founded on to his Windsor-Forest, Rape of the Lock, and Eloisa to Abelard, while the facts and characters alluded to in his late writings will be forgotten and unknown, and their poignancy and propriety little relished; for wit and satire are transient and perishable, but nature and passion are eternal.

He has interspersed some passages of Pope’s life, with which most readers will be pleased. When Pope was yet a child, his father, who had been a merchant in London, retired to Bin-field. He was taught to read by an aunt, and learned to write without a master, by copying printed books. His father used to order him to make English verses, and would oblige him to correct and retouch them over and over, and at last could say, “These are good rhymes.”

At eight years of age he was committed to one Taverner a priest, who taught him the rudiments of the Latin and Greek. At this time he met with Ogleby’s Homer, which seized his attention; he fell next upon Sandy’s Ovid, and remembred these two translations with pleasure to the end of his life.

About ten, being at school near Hide-park-corner, he was taken to the play-house, and was so struck with the splendor of the drama, that he formed a kind of play out of Ogleby’s Homer, intermixed with verses of his own. He persuaded the head-boys to act this piece, and Ajax was performed by his master’s gardener; they were habited2 according to the pictures in Ogleby. At twelve he retired with his father to Windsor-Forest, and formed himself by the study in the best English poets.

In this extract it was thought convenient to dwell chiefly upon such observations as relate immediately to Pope, without deviating with the author into incidental inquiries. We intend to kindle, not to extinguish curiosity, by this slight sketch of a work abounding with curious quotations and pleasing disquisitions. He must be much acquainted with literary history both of remote and late times, who does not find in this essay many things which he did not know before; and if there be any too learned to be instructed in facts or opinions, he may yet properly read this book as a just specimen of literary moderation.