Pope's imitations of Horace, with the prologue and epilogue to his fatires, are without difpute fome of the best of his works; but very few, if any of his pieces, excel them. No author ever imitated

If fome of the most candid among the French critics begin to acknowledge, that they have produced nothing in point of fublimity and majesty equal to the Paradise Loft, we may also venture to affirm that in point of delicacy, elegance, and fine turned raillery, on which they have fo much valued themselves, they have produced nothing equal to the Rape of the Lock. It is in this compofition, Pope principally appears a poet; in which he has difplayed more imagination than all his other works taken together. It should however be remembered, that he was not the first former and creator of those beautiful machines the Sylphs, on which his claim to imagination is chiefly founded. He found them exifting ready to his hand; but has indeed employed them with fingular judgment and artifice.

Effay on Pope, p. 246.

the

the manner of Horace fo happily; and as Pope's genius was naturally inclined to fatire, he has filled thefe imitations with a thousand bright fallies of wit, and keen ftrokes of ridicule, in many places much more delicate and fuperior to those of his original. Pope's are generally fuch clofe imitations that they cannot in their nature difplay that great principle of original poetry, invention: But for many of thofe fine ftrokes of fevere, but genteel fatire, in the prologue and epilogue, he was indebted to nothing but his own imagination; and it will not be a difficult task to prove that they abound with fome beautiful paffages, fuperior to any thing of the kind our language has produced. The fatire on bad authors is every where remarkably animated. The following paffage on the cacoëthes fcribendi is extremely fevere.

I. Is

1. Is there a parfon much be-mus'd in beers A maudlin poetefs, a rhyming peer,

A clerk, foredoom'd his father's foul to cross,
Who pens a ftanza, when he should engross?
Is there, who, lock'd from ink and paper, fcrawls
With defp'rate charcoal round his darken'd walls ? *

Pope, in all his fatyrical writings, is very happy in his epithets; a parfon much be mus'd in beer, maudlin poetefs, &c. throw a great pleafantry over the whole paffage, and heightens the ridicule extremely the circumftance of the clerk is also finely introduced †.

Pope's works, vol. iv. p. 4. fmall edit.

The

The thoughts of men, fays Voltaire, are become an important object in commerce: the bookfellers in Holland gain a million yearly, because Frenchmen formerly had wit. A middling romance is, as I am perfectly well affured, among books, what a fool, that would be thought a man of imagination, is in the world: people laugh at him, VOL. II.

E

but

The whole paffage in the beginning of the prologue, in which he fuppofes his interest and advice defired by a parcel of hungry fcribblers, is worked up with an infinite deal of wit. Sure never

author ridiculed thefe fcribblers with fuch severity of fatire.

2. And drop at last, but in unwilling ears, This faving counfel, "Keep your piece nine years." Nine

but yet they put up with him. This romance gives bread to the author who has compofed it, to the bookfeller who vends it, together with the typefounder, printer, bookbinder, hawker, and, laftly, the retailer of execrable wine, with whom all thofe gentlemen lay out their money this work will moreover ferve for two or three hours amusement to a few women, with whom novelty is the most effential quality in books, as it is in every thing elfe. Thus contemptible as it is, it has produced two things of vaft importance, profit and pleasure.

Voltaire's Works, vol. xvii. p. 36.

Nine years! cries he, who high in Drury-lane Lull'd by Joft Zephyrs thro' the broken pane, Rhymes e'er he wakes, and prints before term ends, Oblig'd by hunger, and request of friends.*

What can be more keen than the fatire in these lines? With what art the poet has introduced the circumstance of the garret with broken windows; and has coupled the real and pretended motive for publishing together, with vaft wit?

3. Who fhames a fcribbler? break one cobweb thro',

He fpins the flight felf-pleafing thread anew:
Deftroy his fib or fophiftry, in vain,

The creature's at his dirty work again;
Thron'd on the center of his thin designs,
Proud of a vast extent of flimfy lines! †

The metaphorical allufion of a fcribbler to a spider in this paffage is poetical

* Verse 39.

+ Verse 90.