ground granted by the Crown, and taken office as Lord Chamberlain. He
wrote more verse than Roscommon and poorer verse. The _Essay on Poetry_,
in which he followed the critical fashion of the day, he was praised
into regarding as a masterpiece. He was continually polishing it, and
during his lifetime it was reissued with frequent variations. It is
polished quartz, not diamond; a short piece of about 360 lines, which
has something to say of each of the chief forms of poetry, from songs to
epics. Sheffield shows most natural force in writing upon plays, and
here in objecting to perfect characters, he struck out the often-quoted
line

_A faultless monster which the world ne'er saw_.

When he comes to the epics he is, of course, all for Homer and Virgil.

_Read Homer once, and you can read no more;
For all books else appear so mean, so poor,
Verse will seem Prose; but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the Books you need_.

And then it is supposed that some Angel had disclosed to M. Bossu, the
French author of the treatise upon Epic Poetry then fashionable, the
sacred mysteries of Homer. John Sheffield had a patronizing recognition
for the genius of Shakespeare and Milton, and was so obliging as to
revise Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and confine the action of that play
within the limits prescribed in the French gospel according to the
Unities. Pope, however, had in the Essay on Criticism reckoned
Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, among the sounder few

_Who durst assert the juster ancient Cause
And have restored Wits Fundamental Laws.
Such was the Muse, whose Rules and Practice tell,
Natures chief Masterpiece is writing well_.

With those last words which form the second line in the _Essay on
Poetry_ Popes citation has made many familiar. Addison paid young Pope
a valid compliment in naming him as a critic in verse with Roscommon,
and, what then passed on all hands for a valid compliment, in holding
him worthy also to be named as a poet in the same breath with the Lord
Chamberlain.]

* * * * *

No. 254. Friday, December 21, 1711. Steele.

[Greek: Semnos eros aretaes, ho de kypridos achos ophellei.]

When I consider the false Impressions which are received by the
Generality of the World, I am troubled at none more than a certain
Levity of Thought, which many young Women of Quality have entertained,
to the Hazar