aire by the brilliance of his conversation.
Young's satires show abundance of wit, and one may not be able to say at
a glance in what they are inferior to Pope. Yet they have hopelessly
perished, whilst Pope's work remains classical. Of all the crowd of
eighteenth-century writers in Pope's manner, only two made an approach
to him worth notice. Johnson's _Vanity of Human Wishes_ surpasses Pope
in general sense of power, and Goldsmith's two poems in the same style
have phrases of a higher order than Pope's. But even these poems have
not made so deep a mark. In the last generation, Gifford's _Baviad and
Maeviad_, and Byron's _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, were clever
reproductions of the manner; but Gifford is already unreadable, and
Byron is pale beside his original; and, therefore, making full allowance
for Pope's monotony, and the tiresome prominence of certain mechanical
effects, we must, I think, admit that he has after all succeeded in
doing with unsurpassable excellence what innumerable rivals have failed
to do as well. The explanation is--if the phrase explains anything--that
he was a man of genius, or that he brought to a task, not of the highest
class, a keenness of sensibility, a conscientious desire to do his very
best, and a capacity for taking pains with his work, which enabled him
to be as indisputably the first in his own peculiar line, as our
greatest men have been in far more lofty undertakings.

The man who could not publish Pastorals without getting into quarrels,
was hardly likely to become a professed satirist without giving offence.
Besides numerous stabs administered to old enemies, Pope opened some
fresh animosities by passages in these poems. Some pointed ridicule was
aimed at Montagu, Earl of Halifax, in the Prologue; for there can be no
doubt that Halifax[26] was pointed out in the character of Bufo. Pope
told a story in later days of an introduction to Halifax, the great
patron of the early years of the century, who wished to hear him read
his Homer. After the reading Halifax suggested that one passage should
be improved. Pope retired rather puzzled by his vague remarks, but, by
Garth's advice, returned some time afterwards, and read the same passage
without alteration. "Ay, now Mr. Pope," said Halifax, "they are
perfectly right; nothing can be better!" This little incident perhaps
suggested to Pope that Halifax was a humbug, and there seems, as already
noticed, to have been some difficul