aphnis,
Alexis, and Thyrsis on British plains, as Virgil had done before him on
the Mantuan." Habit had reconciled Pope to the affectation of calling
English shepherds Daphnis and Thyrsis, but "the names," as De Quincey
says, "are rank with childishness," and the public, who felt the
practice to be absurd, concluded that the censure was real. "It may,"
said Pope, "be observed, as a farther beauty of this pastoral, that the
words nymph, dryad, naiad, faun, Cupid, or satyr, are not once mentioned
through the whole," which was a sneer at Addison's commendation of
Philips for rejecting those dreary nonentities; but the public, who had
been nauseated with them, could not detect a covert sarcasm in the
repetition of the praise by the writer in the Guardian. The circumstance
which seemed to Warton to render the irony transparent was the remark,
that "Philips had with great judgment described wolves in England," but
the ridicule was based upon ignorance, and must have been lost upon
every one who was aware that wolves abounded in the antique period to
which the pastorals referred. Bowles, who knew that the paper was
ironical, yet imagined that Pope was serious in the opening portion,
where it is asserted that Virgil has not above a couple of "true
pastorals," and that Theocritus has scarcely more. This part, however,
of the essay was in the same sarcastic vein with the rest. The previous
critic in the Guardian had laid down the rule that a pastoral should
reflect "the golden age of innocence," and Pope, to deprive Philips of
the benefit of the definition, endeavoured to show that Theocritus and
Virgil had hardly ever conformed to it. He did not mean seriously to
admit that his competitor was a more genuine pastoral poet than Virgil
and Theocritus. His object was to throw ridicule on the definition
itself, albeit he adopted it in his Discourse on Pastoral Poetry when he
was no longer engaged in disparaging Philips.

Nothing can be clearer than that Pope was instigated to write the essay
in the Guardian by his jealousy of the praise which had been bestowed
upon his rival. The course he took was discreditable, and Warburton,
without attempting a direct apology, pretends that the incident which
influenced the poet was the misrepresentations made of him to Addison by
Philips. Ruffhead adds that the calumny consisted in the assertion that
Pope was "engaged in the intrigues of the tory ministry." This would be
a good reason for his ex