uainted with the Pastorals, and undertook to criticise
them. But the correspondence on the subject begins on June 24, 1706,
whence we should infer that it was in April, 1706, and not in 1705, that
Wycherley introduced Pope and his Pastorals to Walsh. The poet would
have departed from his usual practice if he had not falsified dates to
exaggerate his precocity. That he was past seventeen when he first
exhibited his Pastorals to his friends is confirmed by a passage from
the letter, in which George Granville sketches the character of
Wycherley, and invites an unnamed correspondent to meet him. "He shall
bring with him, if you will," says Granville, "a young poet, newly
inspired in the neighbourhood of Cooper's Hill, whom he and Walsh have
taken under their wing. His name is Pope. He is not above seventeen or
eighteen years of age, and promises miracles. If he goes on as he has
begun in the Pastoral way, as Virgil first tried his strength, we may
hope to see English poetry vie with the Roman, and this swan of Windsor
sing as sweetly as the Mantuan."[9] Whatever may be the true date of
the Pastorals, a portion of them certainly existed before April 20,
1706, on which day Tonson, the bookseller, wrote to Pope, "I have lately
seen a pastoral of yours in Mr. Walsh's and Congreve's hands, which is
extremely fine, and is generally approved of by the best judges in
poetry. I remember I have formerly seen you at my shop, and am sorry I
did not improve my acquaintance with you. If you design your poem for
the press, no person shall be more careful in printing of it, nor no one
can give a greater encouragement to it." Three years elapsed before the
Pastorals saw the light, when Tonson became the publisher, and they
appeared on May 2, 1709, in his Sixth Miscellany. The preface, which
Walsh had read in manuscript, and which he calls "very learned and
judicious," did not come out till 1717, and then bore the title of A
Discourse on Pastoral Poetry. Johnson, repeating the language of Walsh,
says that it is "learned in a high degree;" whereas it was avowedly
compiled from two or three recent essayists, and demanded nothing from
the poet to which the term learning could be properly applied. He owed
to his second-hand authorities the arbitrary and pedantic rules which
were framed from the practice of the ancients, and which were employed
by the mechanical critics of his day to repress the free forms of modern
genius. The style would have bee