sionally of Arcadia
and Strephon, and half the book, in which he first tried his powers,
consists of dialogues on Queen Mary's death, between Tityrus and
Corydon, or Mopsus and Menalcas. A series or book of pastorals, however,
I know not that anyone had then lately published.

Not long afterwards Pope made the first display of his powers in four
pastorals, written in a very different form. Philips had taken Spenser,
and Pope took Virgil for his pattern. Philips endeavoured to be natural,
Pope laboured to be elegant.

Philips was now favoured by Addison and by Addison's companions, who
were very willing to push him into reputation. The Guardian gave an
account of Pastoral, partly critical and partly historical; in which,
when the merit of the modern is compared, Tasso and Guarini are censured
for remote thoughts and unnatural refinements, and, upon the whole, the
Italians and French are all excluded from rural poetry, and the pipe of
the pastoral muse is transmitted by lawful inheritance from Theocritus
to Virgil, from Virgil to Spenser, and from Spenser to Philips. With
this inauguration of Philips his rival Pope was not much delighted; he
therefore drew a comparison of Philips's performance with his own, in
which, with an unexampled and unequalled artifice of irony, though he
has himself always the advantage, he gives the preference to Philips.
The design of aggrandising himself he disguised with such dexterity
that, though Addison discovered it, Steele was deceived, and was afraid
of displeasing Pope by publishing his paper. Published however it was
(Guardian, No. 40), and from that time Pope and Philips lived in a
perpetual reciprocation of malevolence. In poetical powers, of either
praise or satire, there was no proportion between the combatants; but
Philips, though he could not prevail by wit, hoped to hurt Pope
with another weapon, and charged him, as Pope thought with Addison's
approbation, as disaffected to the Government. Even with this he was not
satisfied, for, indeed, there is no appearance that any regard was paid
to his clamours. He proceeded to grosser insults, and hung up a rod at
Button's, with which he threatened to chastise Pope, who appears to have
been extremely exasperated, for in the first edition of his Letters he
calls Philips "rascal," and in the last still charges him with detaining
in his hands the subscriptions for "Homer" delivered to him by the
Hanover Club. I suppose it was never suspect