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It was another circumstance, equally propitious to the studies of POPE in this early part of his life, that he inherited a fortune that was a decent competence, and sufficient to supply the small expenses, which, both by constitution and reflection, he required. He had no occasion to distract his thoughts by being solicitous, lodice paranda;" he needed not to wait,

-Pour diner, le succes d'un sonnet.*

de

His father retired from business, at the Revolution, to a little covenient box at Binfield, near Oakingham, in Berkshire; and having converted his effects into money, is said to have brought with him into the country almost twenty thousand pounds. As he was a Papist, he could not purchase, nor put his money to interest on real security; and as he adhered to the interests of King James, he made a point of conscience not to lend it to the new government;

For right hereditary tax'd and fin'd,
He stuck to poverty with peace of mind:

Boileau, Art. Poet. c. 4.

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he therefore kept this sum in his chest, and lived upon the principal, till by that time his son came to the succession, a great part of it was consumed. There was, however, enough left to supply the occasions of our author,* and to keep him from the two most destructive enemies to a "I can young genius, want and dependence. easily conceive, (says a late moralist,) that a mind occupied and overwhelmed with the weight and immensity of its own conceptions, glancing with astonishing rapidity from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven, cannot willingly submit to the dull drudgery of examining the justness and accuracy of a butcher's bill. To descend from the widest and comprehensive views of na

ture,

* He afterwards acquired a considerable fortune by his translation of the Iliad, which was published for his own benefit, by a subscription so large, that it does honour to this Kingdom. Mr. Warburton informs us, that he sold it to Lintot, the bookseller, on the following terms: twelve hundred pounds paid down, and all the books for his subscribers. The Odyssey was published in the same manner, and sold on the same conditions, except only, that instead of twelve, he had but six hundred pounds. He was assisted in this latter work by Brome and Fenton, to the first of whom he gave six hundred pounds, and to the latter three hundred. This translation has proved a good estate to the bookseller.

ture, and weigh out hops for a brewing, must be invincibly disgusting to a true genius; to be able to build imaginary palaces of the most exquisite architecture, but yet not to pay a carpenter's bill, is a cutting mortification and disgrace.*

On the other hand, opulence, and high station, would be equally pernicious and unfavourable to a young genius; as they would almost unavoidably embarrass and immerse him in the cares, the pleasures, the indolence, and the dissipation, that accompany abundance. And, perhaps, the fortune most truly desirable, and the situation most precisely proper for a young poet, are marked out in that celebrated saying of Charles the Ninth of France, "Equi et poetæ ALENDI sunt, non SAGINANDI. Poets and

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horses are to be fed, and not fattened.

The ESSAY ON CRITICISM, which occasioned the introduction of these reflections, was first, I am well informed, written in prose, according

to

The Adventurer, No. 50.

to the precept of Vida, and the practice of Racine.*

Quinetiam, prius effigiem formare, solutis,
Totiusque operis simulacrum fingere, verbis,
Proderit; atque omnes ex ordine nectere partes,
Et seriem rerum, et certos sibi ponere fines,
Per quos tuta regens vestigia tendere pergas.†

When Racine had fixed on a subject for a play, he wrote down in plain prose, not only the subject of each of the five acts, but of every scene, and every speech; so that he could take a view of the whole at once, and see whether every part cohered, and co-operated to produce the intended event: when his matter was thus regularly disposed, he was used to say, My Tragedy is finished."

I now

The younger Racine, in the life of his father, informs us, that he used to say, he dared not touch any of the subjects which Sophocles had handled, and abstained from imitating them from his great veneration of the original. And that this was the reason why he rather imitated Euripides than Sophocles; as in the Phædra, Andromache, Iphigenia.

Poetic. lib. i. ver. 75.

I now propose to make some observations on, and illustrations of, such passages and precepts in this ESSAY, as, on account of their utility, novelty, or elegance, deserve particular attention; and, perhaps, I may take the freedom to hint at a few imperfections in this SENSIBLE performance. I shall cite the passages in the natural order in which they successively occur.

1. In poets as true genius is but rare.*

It is, indeed, so extremely rare, that no country in the succession of many ages, has produced above three or four persons that deserve the title. The "man of rhymes" may be easily found; but the genuine poet, of a lively plastic imagination, the true MAKER or CREATOR, is so uncommon a prodigy, that one is almost tempted to subscribe to the opinion of Sir William Temple, where he says, "That of all the numbers of mankind that live within the compass of a thousand years, for one man that is born capable of making

* Ver. 11.

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