untrymen have so good an opinion of the ancients, and
think so modestly of themselves, that the generality of pastoral writers
have either stolen all from the Greeks and Romans, or so servilely
imitated their manners and customs as makes them very ridiculous."[23]
The method of Philips is adduced in advantageous contrast. He is
commended for changing the details with the scene, and introducing
English ideas into English eclogues. A few months earlier similar praise
had been bestowed upon him by Addison, in the Spectator for October 30,
1712. "When we are at school," said Addison in his essay, "it is
necessary for us to be acquainted with the system of pagan theology, and
we may be allowed to enliven a theme or point an epigram with a heathen
god; but no thought is beautiful which is not just, and no thought can
be just which is not founded in truth, or at least in that which passes
for such. If any are of opinion that there is a necessity of admitting
these classical legends into our serious compositions, in order to give
them a more poetical turn, I would recommend to their consideration the
Pastorals of Mr. Philips. One would have thought it impossible for this
kind of poetry to have subsisted without fauns and satyrs, wood-nymphs
and water-nymphs, with all the tribe of rural deities. But we see he has
given a new life, and a more natural beauty, to this way of writing, by
substituting in the place of these antiquated fables the superstitious
mythology which prevails among the shepherds of our own country."
Addison had previously commenced the reformation by excluding pagan
machinery from his Campaign. It needed but a small amount of taste to
share his opinions, and the writer in the Guardian can hardly be charged
with hostility to Pope for not commending Pastorals which, apart from
their melodious language, were little better than a medley of unnatural
compliments, and unmeaning mythology. Contemporary criticism is more
often corrupted by the kindness of friendship than by the spite of
enmity, but the effect is sometimes the same, and the undue exaltation
of Philips increased the comparative contempt which was cast upon Pope.
He had reason to be annoyed, and it was not much compensation that the
prettiest lines of his January and May were quoted in one of the papers
on Pastoral, to show that fairies could be rendered attractive in verse.

The scheme Pope devised for redressing the wrong, was to send a paper to
the Gua