ctive nations[1]. But the resemblance holds in nothing more, than in their being equally abused by the ignorant pretenders to Poetry of their times; of which not the least memory will remain but in their own Writings, and in the Notes made upon them. What Boileau has done in almost all his poems, our author has only in this: I dare answer for him he will do it in no more; and on this principle, of attacking few but who had slandered him, he could not have done it at all, had he been confined from censuring obscure and worthless persons, for scarce any other were his enemies. However, as the parity is so remarkable, I hope it will continue to the last; and if ever he shall give us an edition of this Poem himself, I may see some of them treated as gently, on their repentance or better merit, as Perrault and Quinault were at last by Boileau.
In one point I must be allowed to think the character of our English Poet the more amiable. He has not been a follower of Fortune or Success; he has lived with the Great without flattery; been a friend to Men in power, without pensions, from whom, as he asked, so he received no favour, but what was done Him in his Friends. As his Satyrs were the more just for being delayed, so were his Panegyrics; bestowed only on such persons as he had familiarly known, only for such virtues as he had long observed in them, and only at such times as others cease to praise, if not begin to calumniate them, I mean when out of power or out of fashion[2]. A satyr, therefore,
- ↑ Essay on Criticism, in French verse, by General Hamilton; the same, in verse also, by Monsieur Roboton, Counsellor and Privy Secretary to king George I. after by the Abbé Reynel, in verse, with notes. Rape of the Lock, in French, by the Princess of Conti, Paris 1728. and in Italian verse, by the Abbé Conti a Noble Venetian; and by the Marquis Rangoni, Envoy Extraordinary from Modena to King George II. Others of his works by Salvini of Florence, &c. His Essays and Dissertations on Homer, several times translated in French. Essay on Man, by the Abbé Reynel, in verse, by Monsieur Silhouet, in prose, 1737. and since by others in French, Italian, and Latin.
- ↑ As Mr. Wycherley, at the time the Town declaimed against his book of Poems; Mr. Walsh, after his death; Sir William Trumbull, when he had resigned the Office of Secretary of State; Lord Bolingbroke, at his leaving England after the Queen's death; Lord Oxford in his last decline of life; Mr. Secretary Craggs, at the end of the South Sea year, and after his death: Others only in Epitaphs.
