is yet so much superior, that in satiric
writing, the Palm must justly be yielded to him. In Mr. Dryden's Absalom
and Achitophel, there are indeed the most poignant strokes of satire,
and characters drawn with the most masterly touches; but this poem with
all its excellencies is much inferior to the Dunciad, though Dryden had
advantages which Mr. Pope had not; for Dryden's characters are men of
great eminence and figure in the state, while Pope has to expose men of
obscure birth and unimportant lives only distinguished from the herd of
mankind, by a glimmering of genius, which rendered the greatest part of
them more emphatically contemptible. Pope's was the hardest task, and he
has executed it with the greatest success. As Mr. Dryden must
undoubtedly have yielded to Pope in satyric writing, it is incumbent on
the partizans of Dryden to name another species of composition, in which
the former excells so as to throw the ballance again upon the side of
Dryden. This species is the Lyric, in which the warmest votaries of Pope
must certainly acknowledge, that he is much inferior; as an irrefutable
proof of this we need only compare Mr. Dryden's Ode on St. Cecilia's
Day, with Mr. Pope's; in which the disparity is so apparent, that we
know not if the most finished of Pope's compositions has discovered such
a variety and command of numbers.

It hath been generally acknowledged, that the Lyric is a more excellent
kind of writing than the Satiric; and consequently he who excells in the
most excellent species, must undoubtedly be esteemed the greatest poet.
--Mr. Pope has very happily succeeded in many of his occasional pieces,
such as Eloisa to Abelard, his Elegy on an unfortunate young Lady, and a
variety of other performances deservedly celebrated. To these may be
opposed Mr. Dryden's Fables, which though written in a very advanced
age, are yet the most perfect of his works. In these Fables there is
perhaps a greater variety than in Pope's occasional pieces: Many of them
indeed are translations, but such as are original shew a great extent of
invention, and a large compass of genius.

There are not in Pope's works such poignant discoveries of wit, or such
a general knowledge of the humours and characters of men, as in the
Prologues and Epilogues of Dryden, which are the best records of the
whims and capricious oddities of the times in which they are written.

When these two great genius's are considered in the light of
transla