he best controversies be ween the churches. Shall I tell you a secret? I did so at fourteen years old, for I loved reading, and my father had no other books. There was a collection of all that had been written on both sides in the reign of King James II. I warmed my head with them, and the consequence was, I found myself a Papist or Protestant by turns according to the last book I read. I am afraid most seekers are in the same case, and when they stop, they are not so properly converted as outwitted You see how little glory you would gain by my conversion; and, after all, I verily believe your Lordship and I are both of the same religion, if we were thoroughly understood by one another, and that all honest and reasonable Christians would be So, if they did but talk enough together every day, and had nothing to do together but to serve God and live in peace with their neighbours.

"As to the temporal side of the question, I can nave no dispute with you; it is certain all the bencficial circumstances of life, and all the shining ones, lic on the part you would invite me to: but if I could bring myself to fancy, what I think you do but fancy, that I have any talents for active life, I want health for it; and besides it is a real truth, I have, if possi ble, less inclination than ability. Contemplative life is not only my scene, but is my habit too. I began my life where most people end theirs, with a disgust of all that the world calls ambition. I don't know why it is called so: for, to me, it always seemed to be rather stooping than climbing. I'll tell you my political and religious sentiments in a few words; in my politics, I think no farther than how to preserve my peace of life in any government under which I live; nor in my religion, than o preserve the peace of my conscience in any church with which I communicate. i hope all churches and all governments are so far of God as they are rightly understood and rightly ad

ministered; and where they are or may be wrong, I leave it to God alone to mend or reform them; which, whenever he does, it must be by greater instruments than I am. I am not a Papist, for I renounce the temporal invasions of the papal power, and detest their arrogated authority over princes and states; I am a Catholic in the strictest sense of the word. If I was born under an absolute prince I would be a quiet subject; but thank God I was not. I have a due sense of the excellence of the British constitu tion. In a word, the things I have always wished to see are not a Roman Catholic, or a French Catholic, or a Spanish Catholic, but a true Catholic; and not a king of Whigs, or a king of Tories, but a king of England."

These are the peaceful maxims upon which we find Mr. Pope conducted his life; and if they cannot in some respects be justified, yet it must be owned that his religion and his politics were well enough adapted for a poet, which entitled him to a kind of universal patronage, and to make every good man his friend.

Dean Swift sometimes wrote to Mr. Pope on the Jopic of changing his religion, and once humorously offered him twenty pounds for that purpose. Mr. Pope's answer to this, Lord Orrery has obliged the world with by preserving it in the life of Swift k is a perfect master-piece of wit and pleasantry.

We have already taken notice that Mr. Pope was called upon by the public voice to translate the Iliad, which he performed with so much applause, and, at the same time, with so much profit to himself, that he was envied by many writers, whose vanity perhaps induced them to believe themselves equal to so great a design. A combination of inferior wits were employed to write the Popiad, in which his transla. tion is characterized as unjust to the original, without beauty of language, or variety of numbers. Instead

of the justness of the original, they say there is an surdity and extravagance; instead of the beautift language of the original, there is solecism and barba rous English. A candid reader may easily discer from this furious introduction, that the critics wer actuated rather by malice than truth, and that they must judge with their eyes shut who can see no beauty of language, no harmony of numbers in thi translation.

But the most formidable critic against Mr. Pope in this great undertaking, was the celebrated Madame Dacier, whom Mr. Pope treated with less ceremony in his Notes on the Iliad than, in the opinion of some people, was due to her sex. This learned lady was not without a sense of the injury, and took an oppor. tunity of discovering her resentment.

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Upon finishing (says she) the second edition of my translation of Homer, a particular friend sent me a translation of part of Mr. Pope's Preface to his version of the Iliad. As I do not understand English, I cannot form any judgment of his performance, though I have heard much of it. I am indeed willing to be lieve, that the praises it has met with are not unmerited, because whatever work is approved by the English nation cannot be bad: but yet I hope I may be permitted to judge of that part of the preface which has been transmitted to me; and I here take the liberty of giving my sentiments concerning it. I most freely acknowledge that Mr. Pope's invention is very lively, though he seems to have been guilty of the same fault into which he owns we are often precipitated by our invention when we depend too much upon the strength of it; as magnanimity, says he may un up to confusion and extravagance, so may great nvention to redundancy and wildness.

"This has been the very case of Mr. Pope himself nothing is more overstrained, or more false, than the usages in which his fancy has represented Home

sorretimes he tells us that the Iliad is a wild paradise where, if we cannot see all the beauties as in an order. ed garden, it is only because the number of them is .nfinitely greater. Sometimes he compares him to a copious nursery, which contains the seeds and first productions of every kind; and, lastly, he represents him under the notion of a mighty tree, which rises from the most vigorous seed; is improved with industry, flourishes and produces the finest fruit, but bears too many branches, which might be lopped intǝ form, to give it a more regular appearance.

"What! is Homer's poem then, according to Mr Pope, a confused heap of beauties, without order or symmetry, and a plot whereon nothing but seeds, nor nothing perfect or formed is to be found? and a production loaded with many unprofitable things which ought to be retrenched, and which choke and disfigure those which deserve to be preserved? Mr. Pope will pardon me if I here oppose those comparisons, which to me appear very false, and entirely contrary to what the greatest of ancient and modern critics ever thought.

"The Iliad is so far from being a wild paradise, that it is the most regular garden, and laid out with more symmetry, than any ever was. Every thing therein is not only in the place it ought to have been, but every thing is fitted for the place it hath. He presents you, at first, with that which ought to be first seen; he places in the middle what ought to be in the middle, and what would be improperly placed at the beginning or end; and he removes what ought to be at a greater distance, to create the more agreeable surprise; and to use a comparison drawn from paine ing, he places that in the greatest light which cannot be too visible, and sinks in the obscurity of the shade what does not require a full view; so that it may be said that Homer is the painter who best knew how to employ the shades and lights. The second compari

son is equally unjust: how could Mr. Pope say, 'that one can only discover seeds, and the first productions of every kind in the Iliad?" Every beauty is there to such an amazing perfection, that the following ages could add nothing to those of any kind; and the an cients have always proposed Homer as the most per fect model in every kind of poetry.

"The third comparison is composed of the errors of the two former; Homer had certainly an incomparable fertility of invention, but his fertility is al ways checked by that just sense which made him re ject every superfluous thing which his vast imagination could offer, and to retain only what was necessary and useful. Judgment guided the hand of this admirable gardener, and was the pruning-hook he employ. ed to lop off every useless branch."

Thus far Madam Dacier differs in her opinion from Mr. Pope concerning Homer; but these remarks, which we have just quoted, partake not at all of the nature of criticism; they are mere assertion. Pope had declared Homer to abound with irregular beautics. Dacier has contradicted him, and asserted, that all his beauties are regular, but no reason is assigned by either of these mighty geniuses in support of their opinions, and the reader is left in the dark as to the real truth. If he is to be guided by the authority of a name only, no doubt the argument will preponderate in favour of our countryman. The French lady then proceeds to answer some observations which Mr. Pope made upon her remarks upon the Iliad, which she performs with a warmth that generally attends writers of her sex. Mr. Pope, however, paid more regard to this fair antagonist than any other critic upon his works. He confessed that he had received great helps from her, and only thought she had through a prodigious and almost superstitious fond pess for Homer) endeavoured to make him appear without any fault or weakness, and stamp a perfec