rs.
His prose-stile is as perfect in its kind as his poetic, and has all the
beauties proper for it, joined to an uncommon force and perspicuity.

Under the profession of the Roman-Catholic religion, to which he adhered
to the last, he maintained all the moderation and charity becoming the
most thorough and confident Protestant. His conversation was natural,
easy and agreeable, without any affectation of displaying his wit, or
obtruding his own judgment, even upon subjects of which he was so
eminently a master.

The moral character of our author, as it did not escape the lash of his
calumniators in his life; so have there been attempts since his death to
diminish his reputation. Lord Bolingbroke, whom Mr. Pope esteemed to
almost an enthusiastic degree of admiration, was the first to make this
attack. Not many years ago, the public were entertained with this
controversy immediately upon the publication of his lordship's Letters
on the Spirit of Patriotism, and the Idea of a Patriot King. Different
opinions have been offered, some to extenuate the fault of Mr. Pope, for
printing and mutilating these letters, without his lordship's knowledge;
others to blame him for it as the highest breach of friendship, and the
greatest mark of dishonour. It would exceed our proposed bounds to enter
into the merits of this controversy; the reader, no doubt, will find it
amply discussed in that account of the life of this great author, which
Mr. Warburton has promised the public.

This great man is allowed to have been one of the first rank amongst the
poets of our nation, and to acknowledge the superiority of none but
Shakespear, Milton, and Dryden. With the two former, it is unnatural to
compare him, as their province in writing is so very different. Pope has
never attempted the drama, nor published an Epic Poem, in which these
two distinguished genius's have so wonderfully succeeded. Though Pope's
genius was great, it was yet of so different a cast from Shakespear's,
and Milton's, that no comparison can be justly formed. But if this may
be said of the former two, it will by no means hold with respect to the
later, for between him and Dryden, there is a great similarity of
writing, and a very striking coincidence of genius. It will not perhaps
be unpleasing to our readers, if we pursue this comparison, and
endeavour to discover to whom the superiority is justly to be
attributed, and to which of them poetry owes the highest obligations