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ticularly the Address to the Incomparable Lady Betty Germain, are, perhaps, as elegant and well-turned as any thing in our language. After reading these Pieces, so full of a knowledge of the world, and discriminations of characters, one is totally at a loss to know what Pope could mean by saying, that though Young was a man of genius, yet that he wanted com

mon sense.

There was always a friendship betwixt our Author and Young; though Harte assured me, that Pope took amiss the pressing Letter Young conscientiously wrote to him; which Letter Harte had seen, urging Pope to write something on the side of Revelation, in order to take off the impressions of those doctrines which the Essay on Man seemed to convey. To this Young alludes in the conclusion of his First Night Thoughts, a work in which, says Johnson, "he has exhibited a very wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions, a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and every odour. In the whole, there is a magnificence, like that ascribed to Chinese Plantations; the magnificence of vast extent, and endless diversity." This eloquent eulogium makes amends for the unfriendly and uncandid Life prefixed to it. Johnson adds, "He had forgotten to mention the Revenge, till a friend reminded him of it." So little did he value dramatic poetry.

Though he did not put his name to the loose Imitation of the Second Satire of Horace, entitled, "Sober Advice from Horace to the Young Gentlemen about Town," printed 1736, yet was he indisputably the

Author of it; and suffered his friend Dodsley to publish it as such, in one edition in 12mo.; and is in plain terms charged with it by Bolingbroke, in one of his Letters.

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No less than four of his Imitations of Horace appeared 1737, which, by the artful accommodations of modern sentiments to ancient, by judicious applications of similar characters, and happy parallels, are become some of the most pleasing and popular of all his Works, especially to readers of years and rience. These are, the Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace to Mr. Murray (to whom he also addressed an Imitation of the Ode to Venus); the Second Satire of the Second Book to Mr. Bethel; the First Epistle of the First Book of Epistles to Lord Bolingbroke; the First Epistle of the Second Book to the King; the Second Epistle of this Book to Colonel Dormer. Of these Imitations, that to the King, Lord Bolingbroke, and Mr. Murray afterward Lord Mansfield, are the best; and that to Mr. Bethel the feeblest. The Epistle to Augustus, at first read and understood, by some superficial courtiers, as a compliment to George II. as soon as the bitter and sarcastic irony in it was discovered, gave great offence.

Mr. Allen of Bath, having long desired our Author to publish a Collection of his Letters, from which, he said, a perfect system of morals might be extracted, offered to be at the cost of a publication of them. Pope refused this offer; but in the year 1737, published an edition of them in quarto, by a large subscription; and a second volume, with the Memoirs of Scriblerus, 1741. I think it proper to give an ac

count of the manner in which this correspondence was procured, in the words of Dr. Johnson.

"One of the passages of Pope's Life, which seems to deserve some inquiry, was a publication of Letters between him and his friends, which falling into the hands of Curll, a rapacious bookseller of no good fame, were by him printed and sold. This volume containing some Letters from Noblemen, Pope incited a prosecution against him in the House of Lords for breach of privilege, and attended himself to stimulate the resentment of his friends. Curll appeared at the bar, and, knowing himself in no great danger, spoke of Pope with very little reverence. He has, said Curll, a knack of versifying, but in prose I think myself a match for him. When the orders of the House were examined, none of them appeared to have been infringed; Curll went away triumphant, and Pope was left to seek some other remedy.

"Curll's account was, that one evening a man in a clergyman's gown, but with a lawyer's band, brought and offered to sale a number of printed volumes, which he found to be Pope's Epistolary Correspondence; that he asked no name, and was told none; but gave the price demanded, and thought himself authorized to use this purchase to his own advantage.

"That Curll gave a true account of the transaction, it is reasonable to believe, because no falsehood was ever detected; and when some years afterward I mentioned it to Lintot, the son of Bernard, he declared his opinion to be, that Pope knew better than any body else how Curll obtained the copies, because

another parcel was at the same time sent to himself, for which no price had ever been demanded, as he made known his resolution not to pay a porter, and consequently not to deal with a nameless agent.

"Such care had been taken to make them public, that they were sent at once to two booksellers; to Curll, who was likely to seize them as a prey; and to Lintot, who might be expected to give Pope information of the seeming injury. Lintot, I believe, did nothing, and Curll did what was expected. That to make them public was the only purpose, may be reasonably supposed, because the numbers offered to sale by the private messengers, shewed that hope of gain could not have been the motive of the impression.

"It seems that Pope, being desirous of printing his Letters, and not knowing how to do, without imputation of vanity, what has in this country been done very rarely, contrived an appearance of compulsion; that when he could complain his Letters were surreptitiously published, he might decently and defensively publish them himself.

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Pope's private correspondence, thus promulgated, filled the nation with praise of his candour, tenderness, and benevolence, the purity of his purpose, and the fidelity of his friendship. There were some Letters which a very good, or a very wise man would wish suppressed; but, as they had been already exposed, it was impossible now to retract them."

In the various sorts of composition in which the English have excelled, we have perhaps the least

claim to excellence in the article of Letters of our celebrated countrymen. The best in this Collection, are of Swift and Arbuthnot, of Peterborough and Trumbal, as written from the heart, and in an easy, familiar style. Those of Bolingbroke are in the form of dissertations; and those of Pope himself, like the elegant and studied Epistles of Pliny and Balsac. All of them are over-crowded with professions of integrity and disinterestedness, with trite reflections on contentment and retirement; a disdain of greatness and courts; a contempt of fame; and an affected strain of common-place morality. They seem to be chiefly valuable for some literary particulars incidentally mentioned.

Being now, in the year 1738, closely connected with the most able opposers of the Ministry and the Court, he wrote the Two Dialogues that took their title from the year in which they were composed, and which are, perhaps, all things considered, some of the strongest Satires ever written in any age or any country. Every species of sarcasm and mode of style are here alternately employed; ridicule, reasoning, irony, mirth, seriousness, lamentation, laughter, familiar imagery, and high poetical painting. Many persons in power were highly provoked, but the name of Pope prevented a prosecution, for what Paxton wished to have called a libel. But about the same time, Paul Whitehead, a very inferior poet, publishing Manners, gave an opportunity for repressing what was thought too great a liberty of the press. He left in his poem a very unguarded line,

"And Sherlock's shop and Henley's are the same."