s, to multiply his images, and to accumulate
all that study might produce, or chance might supply. If the flights of
Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of
Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular
and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls
below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with
perpetual delight.

This parallel will, I hope, when it is well considered, be found just;
and, if the reader should suspect me, as I suspect myself, of some
partial fondness for the memory of Dryden, let him not too hastily
condemn me; for meditation and inquiry, may, perhaps, show him the
reasonableness of my determination.

* * * * *

The works of Pope are now to be distinctly examined, not so much with
attention to slight faults, or petty beauties, as to the general
character and effect of each performance.

It seems natural for a young poet to initiate himself by pastorals,
which, not professing to imitate real life, require no experience; and,
exhibiting only the simple operation of unmingled passions, admit no
subtile reasoning or deep inquiry. Pope's pastorals are not, however,
composed but with close thought; they have reference to the times of the
day, the seasons of the year, and the periods of human life. The last,
that which turns the attention upon age and death, was the author's
favourite. To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness
of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a
delicious employment of the poets. His preference was probably just, I
wish, however, that his fondness had not overlooked a line in which the
zephyrs are made "to lament in silence."

To charge these pastorals with want of invention, is to require what was
never intended. The imitations are so ambitiously frequent, that the
writer evidently means rather to show his literature, than his wit. It
is surely sufficient for an author of sixteen, not only to be able to
copy the poems of antiquity with judicious selection, but to have
obtained sufficient power of language, and skill in metre, to exhibit a
series of versification, which had in English poetry no precedent, nor
has since had an imitation.

The design of Windsor Forest is evidently derived from Cooper's Hill,
with some attention to Waller's poem on the Park; but Pope cannot be
denied to excel