In 1756, appeared the first volume of his Essay on the genius and
writings of Pope, dedicated to Young. The name of the author was to have
been concealed, but he does not seem to have kept his own secret very
carefully, for it was immediately spoken of as his by Akenside, Johnson,
and Dr. Birch. The second volume did not follow till after an interval
of twenty-six years. The information contained in this essay, which is
better known than his other writings, is such as the recollection of a
scholar, conversant in polite literature, might easily have supplied. He
does not, like his brother, ransack the stores of antiquity for what has
been forgotten, but deserves to be recalled; nor, like Hurd, exercise,
on common materials, a refinement that gives the air of novelty to that
with which we have been long familiar. He relaxes, as Johnson said of
him, the brow of criticism into a smile. Though no longer in his desk
and gown, he is still the benevolent and condescending instructor of
youth; a writer, more capable of amusing and tempting onwards, by some
pleasant anticipations, one who is a novice in letters, than of
satisfying the demands of those already initiated. He deserves some
praise for having been one of the first who attempted to moderate the
extravagant admiration for Pope, whom he considered as the poet of
reason rather than of fancy; and to disengage us from the trammels of
the French school. Some of those who followed have ventured much
further, with success; but it was something to have broken the ice. I do
not know that he published anything else while he remained at
Winchester, except[2] an edition of Sir Philip Sydney's Defence of
Poesy, and Observations on Eloquence and Poetry from the Discoveries of
Ben Jonson, in 1787. His literary exertions, and the attention he paid
to the duties of his school, did not go unrewarded. In 1766 he was
advanced to the Head-mastership of Winchester, and took his two degrees
in divinity; in 1782, Bishop Lowth gave him a prebend of St. Paul's, and
the rectory of Chorley, which he was allowed to exchange for Wickham, in
Hants. In 1788, through the intervention of Lord Shannon with Mr. Pitt,
he obtained a prebend of Winchester; and soon after, at the solicitation
of Lord Malmesbury, was presented by the Bishop of that diocese to the
rectory of Easton, which, in the course of a twelve-month, he exchanged
for Upham.

In his domestic relations, he enjoyed as much happiness as prude