purposes of the poem. The heathen deities can no longer gain attention: we should have turned away from a conteft between Venus and Diana; the employment of allegorical perfons always excites conviction of its own abfurdity; they may produce effects, but cannot conduct actions; when the phantom is put in motion, it diffolves; thus Difcord may raise a mutiny, but Difcord cannot conduct a march, nor befiege a town. Pope brought into view a new race of Beings, with powers and paffions proportionate to their operation. The fylphs and gnomes act at the toilet and the tea-table; what more terrifick and more powerful phantoms perform on the stormy ocean, or the field of battle, they give their proper help, and do their proper mischief.

Pope is faid, by an objector, not to have been the inventer of this petty nation; a charge which might with more justice have been brought against the author of the Iliad, who doubtless adopted the religious fyftem of his country; for what is there but the names of his agents which Pope has not invented? Has he not affigned them characters and operations never heard of before? Has he not,

at

at least, given them their first poetical existence? If this is not fufficient to denominate his work original, nothing original ever can be written.

:

In this work are exhibited, in a very high degree, the two most engaging powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new. A race of aerial people, never heard of before, is prefented to us in a manner fo clear and easy, that the reader feeks for no further information, but immediately mingles with his new acquaintance, adopts their interefts, and attends their pursuits, loves a fylph, and detests a gnome.

That familiar things are made new, every paragraph will prove. The fubject of the poem is an event below the common incidents of common life; nothing real is introduced that is not feen fo often as to be no longer regarded, yet the whole detail of a female-day is here brought before us invested with so much art of decoration, that, though nothing is difguifed, every thing is striking, and we feel all the appetite of curiofity for that from

which we have a thousand times turned fafti

diously away.

The purpose of the Poet is, as he tells us, to laugh at the little unguarded follies of the female fex. It is therefore without justice that Dennis charges the Rape of the Lock with the want of a moral, and for that reafon fets it below the Lutrin, which exposes the pride and difcord of the clergy. Perhaps neither Pope nor Boileau has made the world much better than he found it; but if they had both fucceeded, it were easy to tell who would have deserved most from publick gratitude. The freaks, and humours, and fpleen, and vanity of women, as they embroil families in difcord, and fill houses with difquiet, do more to obftruct the happiness of life in a year than the ambition of the clergy in many centuries. It has been well obferved, that the mifery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from fmall vexations continually repeated.

It is remarked by Dennis likewise, that the machinery is fuperfluous; that, by all the buftle of preternatural operation, the main

4

event

event is neither haftened nor retarded. To this charge an efficacious anfwer is not easily made. The fylphs cannot be faid to help or to oppose, and it must be allowed to imply fome want of art, that their power has not been fufficiently intermingled with the action. Other parts may likewife be charged with want of connection; the game at ombre might be fpared, but if the Lady had loft her hair while she was intent upon her cards, it might have been inferred that thofe who are too fond of play will be in danger of neglecting more important interefts. Those perhaps are faults; but what are fuch faults to fo much excellence!

The Epiftle of Eloife to Abelard is one of the most happy productions of human wit: the fubject is fo judiciously chofen, that it would be difficult, in turning over the annals of the world, to find another which fo many circumftances concur to recommend. We regularly intereft ourfelves 'moft in the fortune of those who moft deferve our notice. Abelard and Eloife were confpicuous in their days for eminence of merit. The heart naturally loves truth. The adventures and misfortunes

of

of this illuftrious pair are known from undifputed hiftory. Their fate does not leave the mind in hopeless dejection; for they both found quiet and confolation in retirement and piety. So new and so affecting is their story, that it fuperfedes invention, and imagination ranges at full liberty without ftraggling into fcenes of fable.

The story, thus fkilfully adopted, has been diligently improved. Pope has left nothing behind him, which feems more the effect of ftudious perfeverance and laborious revifal. Here is particularly obfervable the curiofa felicitas, a fruitful foil, and careful cultivation. Here is no crudeness of sense, nor asperity of language.

The fources from which fentiments, which have fo much vigour and efficacy, have been drawn, are fhewn to be the mystick writers by the learned author of the Essay on the Life and Writings of Pope; a book which teaches how the brow of Criticism may be smoothed, and how she may be enabled, with all her severity, to attract and to delight..

The