rrowness of
the definer, though a definition, which shall exclude Pope, will not
easily be made. Let us look round upon the present time, and back upon
the past; let us inquire to whom the voice of mankind has decreed the
wreath of poetry; let their productions be examined, and their claims
stated, and the pretensions of Pope will be no more disputed. Had he
given the world only his version, the name of poet must have been
allowed him: if the writer of the Iliad were to class his successors, he
would assign a very high place to his translator, without requiring any
other evidence of genius.

* * * * *

The following Letter, of which the original is in the hands of lord
Hardwicke, was communicated to me by the kindness of Mr. Jodrell.

"To Mr. BRIDGES, at the bishop of London's, at Fulham.

"Sir,--The favour of your letter, with your remarks, can never
be enough acknowledged; and the speed with which you discharged
so troublesome a task, doubles the obligation.

"I must own, you have pleased me very much by the commendations
so ill bestowed upon me; but, I assure you, much more by the
frankness of your censure, which I ought to take the more kindly
of the two, as it is more advantageous to a scribbler to be
improved in his judgment, than to be soothed in his vanity. The
greater part of those deviations from the Greek, which you have
observed, I was led into by Chapman and Hobbes; who are, it
seems, as much celebrated for their knowledge of the original,
as they are decried for the badness of their translations.
Chapman pretends to have restored the genuine sense of the
author, from the mistakes of all former explainers, in several
hundred places; and the Cambridge editors of the large Homer, in
Greek and Latin, attributed so much to Hobbes, that they confess
they have corrected the old Latin interpretation, very often by
his version. For my part, I generally took the author's meaning
to be as you have explained it; yet their authority, joined to
the knowledge of my own imperfectness in the language, overruled
me. However, sir, you may be confident I think you in the right,
because you happen to be of my opinion: for men (let them say
what they will) never approve any other's sense, but as it
squares with their own. But you have made me much more proud of,
and positive in,