advance opinions diametrically oppofite to each other. Some of Corneille's difcourfes on his own tragedies are admirably just. And one of the best pieces of modern criticism, the academy's obfervations on the Cid, was, we know, the work of perfons who had themselves written well. And our author's own excellent preface to his tranflation of the Illiad, one of the best pieces of profe in the English language, is an example how well poets are qualified to be critics.

4. Some neither can for wits nor critics pass,
As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass;
Thofe half-learn'd witlings, numerous in our isle,
As half-form'd infects on the banks of Nile;
Unfinish'd things, one knows not what to call,
Their generation's fo equivocal*.

THESE lines and those preceding, and following them, are excellently fatirical; and were, I think, the first we find in his works, that give an indication of that species of poetry to which his talent was most powerfully bent, and in which, tho' not, as we shall fee,

* Ver. 38.

in others, he excelled all mankind.

The

fimile of the mule heightens the satire, and is new; as is the application of the infects of the Nile. POPE never fhines fo brightly as when he is profcribing bad authors.

5.

In the foul while MEMORY prevails,

The folid pow'r of UNDERSTANDING fails;
Where beams of bright IMAGINATION play,
The MEMORY's foft figures melt away *.

I HARDLY believe there is in any language a metaphor more appofitely applied, or more elegantly expreffed, than this of the effects of the warmth of fancy. Locke who has embellished his dry subject with a vast variety of pleafing fimilitudes and allufions, has a paffage, relating to the retentiveness of the memory, fo very like this before us, and fo happily worded, that I cannot forbear giving the reader the pleasure of comparing them together; only premifing, that these two paffages are patterns of the manner in which the metaphor should be used, and of the method of preserving it unmixed with any other idea,

* Ver. 56.

and

and not continuing it too far.

"Our minds

represent to us thofe tombs to which we are approaching; where though the brafs and marble remain, yet the infcriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away. How much the conftitution of our bodies are concerned in this, and whether the temper of the brain makes this difference, that in fome, it retains the characters drawn on it like marble, in others like freeftone, and in others little better than fand, I fhall not here enquire; though it may feem probable that the conftitution of the body does fometimes influence the memory; fince we fometimes find a disease quite strip the mind of all it's ideas; and the flames of a fever, in a few days, CALCINE all those images to duft and confufion, which feemed to be as lafting as if graved in marble*."

WITH respect to the truth of this observation of POPE, experience abundantly evinceth, that the three great faculties of the foul

*Effay concerning Human Understanding, ch. x. fect. 5.

here

here spoken of are feldom found united in the fame perfon. There have yet exifted but a few transcendent geniuses, who have been fingularly bleft with this rare affemblage of different talents. All that I can at prefent recollect, who have at once enjoyed in full vigour, a sublime and splendid imagination, a folid and profound understanding, an exact and tenacious memory, are Herodotus, Plato, Tully, Livy, Tacitus, Galilæo, Bacon, Des Cartes, Locke, Malebranche, Milton, Burnet of the Charterhouse, Berkley and Montefqueiu. Bacon, in his Novum Organum, divides the human genius into two forts; "Men of dry diftinct heads, cool imaginations, and keen application; they eafily apprehend the differences of things, are masters in controverfy, and excell in confutation; and these are the most common. The fecond fort are men of warm fancies, elevated thought, and wide knowledge: they instantly perceive the refemblances of things, and are poets or makers in fcience, invent arts, and ftrike out new light wherever they carry their Q 2 views."

views*." This general observation has in it all that acuteness, comprehenfion, and knowledge of man, which fo eminently distinguished this philofopher.

6. One science only will one genius fit;
So vaft is art, fo narrow human wit.
Not only bounded to peculiar arts,

But oft in those confin'd to fingle parts †.

WHEN Tully attempted poetry, he became as ridiculous as Bolingbroke when he attempted philofophy and divinity. We look in vain for that genius which produced the Differtation on Parties, in the tedious philofophical works; of which it is no exaggerated fatire to say, that the reasoning of them is fophiftical and inconclufive, the style diffuse and verbose, and the learning feemingly contained in them not drawn from the originals, but picked up and purloined from French critics and tranflations; and particularly from Bayle, from Rapin, and Thomaffin, (as perhaps may be one day minutely

* Pag. 40.

+ Ver. 60.

fhewn)