rroneous.[12]--How amusing to shape to one's self such a critique as a
Wit of Charles's days, or a Lord of the Miscellanies or trading
Journalist of King William's time, would have brought forth, if he had
set his faculties industriously to work upon this Poem, every where
impregnated with _original_ excellence.

So strange indeed are the obliquities of admiration, that they whose
opinions are much influenced by authority will often be tempted to think
that there are no fixed principles[13] in human nature for this art to
rest upon. I have been honoured by being permitted to peruse in MS. a
tract composed between the period of the Revolution and the close of
that century. It is the Work of an English Peer of high accomplishments,
its object to form the character and direct the studies of his son.
Perhaps nowhere does a more beautiful treatise of the kind exist. The
good sense and wisdom of the thoughts, the delicacy of the feelings, and
the charm of the style, are, throughout, equally conspicuous. Yet the
Author, selecting among the Poets of his own country those whom he deems
most worthy of his son's perusal, particularises only Lord Rochester,
Sir John Denham, and Cowley. Writing about the same time, Shaftesbury,
an author at present unjustly depreciated, describes the English Muses
as only yet lisping in their cradles.

The arts by which Pope, soon afterwards, contrived to procure to himself
a more general and a higher reputation than perhaps any English Poet
ever attained during his life-time, are known to the judicious. And as
well known is it to them, that the undue exertion of those arts is the
cause why Pope has for some time held a rank in literature, to which, if
he had not been seduced by an over-love of immediate popularity, and had
confided more in his native genius, he never could have descended.

[12] Hughes is express upon this subject: in his dedication of Spenser's
Works to Lord Somers, he writes thus. 'It was your Lordship's
encouraging a beautiful Edition of "Paradise Lost" that first brought
that incomparable Poem to be generally known and esteemed.'

[13] This opinion seems actually to have been entertained by Adam Smith,
the worst critic, David Hume not excepted, that Scotland, a soil to
which this sort of weed seems natural, has produced.

He bewitched the nation by his melody, and dazzled it by his polished
style, and was himself blinded by his own success. Having wandered from
humanity in h