to whatever levities he has been betrayed, it does not appear that his principles were ever corrupted, or that he ever lost his belief of Revelation. The pofitions which he tranfmitted from Bolingbroke he seems not to have understood, and was pleased with an interpretation that made them orthodox.

A man of fuch exalted fuperiority, and fo little moderation, would naturally have all his delinquences observed and aggravated: thofe who could not deny that he was excellent, would rejoice to find that he was not perfect.

Perhaps it may be imputed to the unwillingness with which the fame man is allowed to poffefs many advantages, that his learning has been depreciated. He certainly was in his early life a man of great literary curiosity; and when he wrote his Effay on Criticism had, for his age, a very wide acquaintance with books. When he entered into the living world, it seems to have happened to him as to many others, that he was lefs attentive to dead mafters; he ftudied in the academy of Paracelfus, and made the universe his favourite volume. He gathered his notions fresh

from

from reality, not from the copies of authors, but the originals of Nature. Yet there is no reason to believe that literature ever loft his esteem; he always profeffed to love reading; and Dobfon, who spent some time at his house translating his Essay on Man, when I asked him what learning he found him to poffefs, answered, More than I expected. His frequent references to hiftory, his allufions to various kinds of knowledge, and his images felected from art and nature, with his obfervations on the operations of the mind and the modes of life, fhew an intelligence perpetually on the wing, excurfive, vigorous, and diligent, eager to purfue knowledge, and attentive to retain it,

From this curiofity arose the defire of travelling, to which he alludes in his verses to Jervas, and which, though he never found an opportunity to gratify it, did not leave him till his life declined,

Of his intellectual character, the conftituent and fundamental principle was Good Senfe, a prompt and intuitive perception of confonance and propriety. He faw immedi ately,

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ately, of his own conceptions, what was to be chofen, and what to be rejected; and, in the works of others, what was to be fhunned, and what was to be copied.

But good fenfe alone is a fedate and quiefcent quality, which manages its poffeffions well, but does not increase them; it collects few materials for its own operations, and preferves fafety, but never gains fupremacy. Pope had likewise genius; a mind active, ambitious, and adventurous, always investigating, always afpiring; in its widest searches ftill longing to go forward, in its highest flights still wishing to be higher; always imagining fomething greater than it knows, always endeavouring more than it can do.

To affift these powers, he is faid to have had great strength and exactnefs of memory. That which he had heard or read was not eafily loft; and he had before him not only what his own meditation fuggefted, but what he had found in other writers, that might be accommodated to his prefent purpose.

Thefe benefits of nature he improved by inceffant and unwearied diligence; he had recourfe

Course to every fource of intelligence, and loft no opportunity of information; he confulted the living as well as the dead; he read his compofitions to his friends, and was never content with mediocrity when excellence could be attained. He confidered poetry as the business of his life, and however he might feem to lament his occupation, he followed it with conftancy; to make verfes was his first labour, and to mend them was his laft.

From his attention to poetry he was never diverted. If converfation offered any thing that could be improved, he committed it to paper; if a thought, or perhaps an expreffion more happy than was common, rose to his mind, he was careful to write it; an independent distich was preserved for an opportunity of infertion, and fome little fragments have been found containing lines, or parts of lines, to be wrought upon at fome other

time.

He was one of those few whofe labour is their pleasure he was never elevated to negligence, nor wearied to impatience; he never

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passed a fault unamended by indifference, nor quitted it by despair. He laboured his works firft to gain reputation, and afterwards to keep it.

Of compofition there are different methods. Some employ at once memory and invention, and, with little intermediate ufe of the pen, form and polish large maffes by continued meditation, and write their productions only when, in their own opinion, they have completed them. It is related of Virgil, that his cuftom was to pour out a great number of verfes in the morning, and pafs the day in fetrenching exuberances and correcting inaccuracies. The method of Pope, as may be collected from his tranflation, was to write his first thoughts in his first words, and gradually to amplify, decorate, rectify, and refine them.

With fuch faculties, and fuch difpofitions, he excelled every other writer in poetical pru dence; he wrote in fuch a manner as might expose him to few hazards. He used almost always the fame fabrick of verse; and, indeed, by thofe few ellays which he made of