thout a stone, a name,
Which once had beauty, titles, wealth and fame,
How lov'd, how honoured once, avails thee not,
To whom related, or by whom begot;
A heap of dust alone remains of thee;
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!

No poem of our author's more deservedly obtained him reputation, than
his Essay on Criticism. Mr. Addison, in his Spectator, No. 253, has
celebrated it with such profuse terms of admiration, that it is really
astonishing, to find the same man endeavouring afterwards to diminish
that fame he had contributed to raise so high.

The art of criticism (says he) which was published some months ago, is a
master-piece in its kind. The observations follow one another, like
those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity,
which would have been requisite in a prose writer. They are some of them
uncommon, but such as the reader must assent to, when he sees them
explained with that elegance and perspicuity in which they are
delivered. As for those which are the most known, and the most received,
they are placed in so beautiful a light, and illustrated with such apt
allusions, that they have in them all the graces of novelty, and make
the reader, who was before acquainted with them, still more convinced of
their truth and solidity. And here give me leave to mention, what
Monsieur Boileau has so well enlarged upon, in the preface to his works;
that wit and fine writing do not consist so much in advancing things
that are new, as in giving things that are known an agreeable turn. It
is impossible for us, who live in the latter ages of the world, to make
observations in criticism, morality, or any art and science, which have
not been touched upon by others. We have little else left us, but to
represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or
more uncommon lights. If a reader examines Horace's Art of Poetry, he
will find but few precepts in it, which he may not meet with in
Aristotle, and which were not commonly known by all the poets of the
Augustan age. His way of expressing, and applying them, not his
invention of them, is what we are chiefly to admire.--

"Longinus, in his Reflexions, has given us the same kind of sublime,
which he observes in the several passages which occasioned them. I
cannot but take notice, that our English author has, after the same
manner, exemplified several of his precepts, in the very precepts
themselves." He then prod