Cremona now shall ever boast thy name,
As next in place to Mantua, next in fame!

But soon by impious arms from Latium chased,
Their ancient bounds the banish'd Muses pass’d:
Thence arts o'er all the northern world advance,
But critic-learning florish'd most in France ;
The rules, a nation born to serve, obeys;
And Boileau still in right of Horace sways :
But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despised, 715
And kept unconquer'd and uncivilised :
Fierce for the liberties of wit, and bold,
We still defied the Romans, as of old.
Yet some there were, among the sounder few
Of those who less presumed and better knew, 720
Who durst assert the juster ancient cause,
And here restored wit's fundamental laws.
Such was the Muse, whose rules and practice

tell, · Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.'

726

And every

730

Such was Roscommon, not more learn’d than good;
With manners generous as his noble blood;
To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known,

author's merit but his own. Such late was Walsh - the Muse's judge and

friend, Who justly knew to blame or to comm

nmend; To failings mild, but zealous for desert; The clearest head, and the sincerest heart. This humble praise, lamented shade! receive; This praise at least a grateful Muse may give: The Muse, whose early voice you taught to sing, Prescribed her heights, and pruned her tender wing,

736 Her guide now lost, no more attempts to rise, But in low numbers short excursions tries; Content, if hence the unlearn'd their wants may

view, The learn'd reflect on what before they knew : 740 Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame; Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame: Averse alike to flatter or offend; Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.

725 Such was Roscommon. An Essay on Translated Verse' seems, at first sight, to be a barren subject; yet Roscommon has decorated it with many precepts of utility and taste, and enlivened it with a tale in imitation of Boileau.

744 Nor yet too vain to mend. Probably adopted from the concluding lines of Boileau's' Art of Poetry:'

Censeur un peu facheux, mais souvent nécessaire ;
Plus enclin à blamer, que savant à bien faire.

MORAL ESSAYS,

IN FOUR EPISTLES :

TO SEVERAL PERSONS.

Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se
Impediat verbis lassis onerantibus aures :
Et sermone opus est modo tristi, sæpe jocoso,
Defendente vicem modo rhetoris atque poetæ ;
Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque
Extenuantis eas consulto.

Horace.

MORAL ESSAYS.

manners.

These Essays exhibit the highest powers of the author as a satirist : nothing can be more animated than his sketches of character, and nothing more poignant than his animadversions on vice. The Roman and French satirists were evidently his models; but equalling Horace in knowlege of the human heart, he excels the school of Boileau in strength of rebuke and accuracy of conception. The conversation and habits of France, and the graces of a language incomparable in its expression of the minor feelings, had long given a marked superiority to its delineations of national

The quaint truth of Montaigne, the vigorous eccentricity of La Bruyère, and the caustic brilliancy of Rochefoucault, were purely and perfectly French: but in the * Moral Essays' of Pope we have superadded the soundness of English morals, and the manliness of English reason. These Essays were originally designed as a continuation of the great work on morals, to which Pope looked as the great labor of his life, and the consummation of his fame.

Warburton, familiar with the author's projects, is thus intitled to be listened to on the subject of the series. He tells us that the · Essay on Man’ was intended to be comprised in four books; the first of which the author has given us under that title, in four epistles. The second was to have consisted of the same number: 1. of the extent and