rds contending for bowls and lambs in alternate strophes, these
niceties seem a little out of place. After swallowing such a camel of an
anachronism as is contained in the following lines, it is ridiculous to
pride oneself upon straining at a gnat:--

Inspire me, says Strephon,

Inspire me, Phoebus, in my Delia's praise
With Waller's strains or Granville's moving lays.
A milkwhite bull shall at your altars stand,
That threats a fight, and spurns the rising sand.

Granville would certainly not have felt more surprised at meeting a
wolf, than at seeing a milk-white bull sacrificed to Phoebus on the
banks of the Thames. It would be a more serious complaint that Pope, who
can thus admit anachronisms as daring as any of those which provoked
Johnson in Lycidas, shows none of that exquisite feeling for rural
scenery which is one of the superlative charms of Milton's early poems.
Though country-bred, he talks about country sights and sounds as if he
had been brought up at Christ's Hospital, and read of them only in
Virgil. But, in truth, it is absurd to dwell upon such points. The sole
point worth notice in the Pastorals is the general sweetness of the
versification. Many corrections show how carefully Pope had elaborated
these early lines, and by what patient toil he was acquiring the
peculiar qualities of style in which he was to become pre-eminent. We
may agree with Johnson that Pope performing upon a pastoral pipe is
rather a ludicrous person, but for mere practice even nonsense verses
have been found useful.

The young gentleman was soon to give a far more characteristic specimen
of his peculiar powers. Poets, according to the ordinary rule, should
begin by exuberant fancy, and learn to prune and refine as the reasoning
faculties develop. But Pope was from the first a conscious and
deliberate artist. He had read the fashionable critics of his time, and
had accepted their canons as an embodiment of irrefragable reason. His
head was full of maxims, some of which strike us as palpable truisms,
and others as typical specimens of wooden pedantry. Dryden had set the
example of looking upon the French critics as authoritative lawgivers in
poetry. Boileau's art of poetry was carefully studied, as bits of it
were judiciously appropriated by Pope. Another authority was the great
Bossu, who wrote in 1675 a treatise on epic poetry; and the modern
reader may best judge of the doctrines characteristic of the scho