accuse a profest critic of severity, we may both recollect, that when I had occasion to speak of your entertaining and instructive Essay on Pope, I scrupled not to consider the main scope of it a little too severe; and in truth, my dear friend, I think so still; because it is the aim of that charming Essay to prove, that Pope possessed not those very high poetical talents, for which the world though sufficiently inclined to discover and magnify his defects, had allowed him credit. You consider him as the poet of reason, and intimate that he stooped to truth and moralized his song," from a want of native powers to support a long flight in the higher province of fancy. To me, I confess, his Rape of the Lock appears a sufficient proof that he possessed, in a superior degree, the faculty in which you would reduce him to a secondary rank; he chose, indeed, in many of his productions, to be the poet of reason rather than of fancy; but I apprehend his choice was influenced by an idea (I believe a mistaken idea) that moral satire is the species of poetry by which

a põet of modern times may render the greatest service to mankind. But if in one article you have not been so kind as I could wish, to the poet of morality, I rejoice in recollecting, that you are on the point of making him considerable amends, and of fulfilling a prediction of mine, by removing from the pages of Pope a great portion of the lumber with which they were amply loaded by Warburton. You will soon, I trust, prove to the literary world, as you perfectly proved to me some years ago, that the poet has suffered not a little from the absurdities of his arrogant annotator. It is hardly possible for a man of letters, who affectionately venerates the name of Milton, and recollects some expressions of Warburton concerning his poetry and his moral character, to speak of that supercilious prelate without catching some portion of his own scornful spirit: you will immediately perceive that I allude to his having bestowed upon · Milton the opprobrious title of a time-server.* Do

With what peculiar propriety Warburton applied this name to Milton, the reader will best judge, who re

you recollect, my dear learned critic, extensive as your studies have been; do you recollect, in the wide range of ancient and modern defamation, a more unpardonable abuse of language? Milton, a poet of the most powerful, and, perhaps, the most independent mind that was ever given to a mere mortal, insulted with the appellation of a timeserver; and by whom? by Warburton, whose writings, and whose fortune-but I will not copy the contemptuous prelate in his favorite exercise of re

collects the humourous Butler's very admirable charac-. ter of a time-server,which contains the following passage: “He is very zealous to shew himself, upon all occasions a true member of the church for the time being, and has not the least scruple in his conscience against the doctrine and discipline of it, as it stands at present, or shall do hereafter, unsight unseen; for he is resolved to be always for the truth, which he believes is never so plainly demonstrated as in that character that says 'it is great and prevails'; and in that sense only fit to be adhered to by a prudent man, who will never be kinder to truth than she is to him; for suffering is a very evil effect, and not likely to proceed from a good cause." Butler's Remains, vol. ii. p. 220.

viling the literary characters, whose opinions were different from his own; his habit of indulging a contemptuous and dogmatical spirit has already drawn upon his name and writings the natural punishment of such verbal intemperance; and the mitred follower of his fame and fortune, who has lately endeavoured to prop his reputation by a tenderly partial but a very imperfect life of his precipitate and quarrelsome patron, has rather lessened, perhaps, his own credit, than increased that of his master, by that affected coldness of contempt with which he describes, or rather disfigures, the illustrious chastiser of Warburtonian insolence, the more accomplished critic, of whom you eminent scholars of Winton are very justly proud; I mean the eloquent and graceful Lowth.

But as I am not fond of literary strife, however dignified and distinguished the antagonists may be, I will hasten to extricate myself from this little group of contentious critics; for it must be matter of regret to every sincere votary of peace and benevolence to observe, that the field of litera

ture is too frequently a field of cruelty, which almost realizes the hyperbolical expression of Lucan and exhibits

66 Plusquam civilia bella;

where men, whose kindred studies should humaniza their temper, and unite them in the ties of frater nal regard, are too apt to exert all their faculties in ferociously mangling each other; where we sometimes behold the friendship of years dissolved in a moment, and converted into furious hostility, which, though it does not endanger, yet never fails to embitter life; and perhaps the source of such contention,

❝teterrima belli

"Causa

instead of being a fair and faithless Helen, is nothing more than a particle of grammar in a dead language. O that the spleen-correcting powers, of mild,