he was indefatigably diligent, and
insatiably curious; wanting health for violent, and money for expensive
pleasures, and having excited in himself very strong desires of
intellectual eminence, he spent much of his time over his books; but he
read only to store his mind with facts and images, seizing all that his
authors presented with undistinguishing voracity, and with an appetite
for knowledge too eager to be nice. In a mind like his, however, all
the faculties were at once involuntarily improving. Judgment is forced
upon us by experience. He that reads many books must compare one opinion
or one style with another; and, when he compares, must necessarily
distinguish, reject, and prefer. But the account given by himself of his
studies was, that from fourteen to twenty he read only for amusement,
from twenty to twenty-seven for improvement and instruction; that in the
first part of this time he desired only to know, and in the second he
endeavoured to judge.

The Pastorals, which had been, for some time, handed about among poets
and criticks, were at last printed, 1709, in Tonson's Miscellany, in a
volume which began with the Pastorals of Philips, and ended with those
of Pope.

The same year was written the Essay on Criticism; a work which displays
such extent of comprehension, such nicety of distinction, such
acquaintance with mankind, and such knowledge both of ancient and modern
learning, as are not often attained by the maturest age and longest
experience. It was published about two years afterwards; and, being
praised by Addison in the Spectator[113] with sufficient liberality, met
with so much favour as enraged Dennis, "who," he says, "found himself
attacked, without any manner of provocation on his side, and attacked in
his person, instead of his writings, by one who was wholly a stranger to
him, at a time when all the world knew he was persecuted by fortune; and
not only saw that this was attempted in a clandestine manner, with the
utmost falsehood and calumny, but found that all this was done by a
little affected hypocrite, who had nothing in his mouth at the same time
but truth, candour, friendship, good-nature, humanity, and magnanimity."

How the attack was clandestine is not easily perceived, nor how his
person is depreciated; but he seems to have known something of Pope's
character, in whom may be discovered an appetite to talk too frequently
of his own virtues.

The pamphlet is such as rage might be