hat of any other person; for I consider men after their death in
no other light than as they were writers, and wholly disregard everything
else. I shall only observe that Waller, though born in a court, and to
an estate of five or six thousand pounds sterling a year, was never so
proud or so indolent as to lay aside the happy talent which Nature had
indulged him. The Earls of Dorset and Roscommon, the two Dukes of
Buckingham, the Lord Halifax, and so many other noblemen, did not think
the reputation they obtained of very great poets and illustrious writers,
any way derogatory to their quality. They are more glorious for their
works than for their titles. These cultivated the polite arts with as
much assiduity as though they had been their whole dependence.

They also have made learning appear venerable in the eyes of the vulgar,
who have need to be led in all things by the great; and who,
nevertheless, fashion their manners less after those of the nobility (in
England I mean) than in any other country in the world.

LETTER XXII.--ON MR. POPE AND SOME OTHER FAMOUS POETS

I intended to treat of Mr. Prior, one of the most amiable English poets,
whom you saw Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary at Paris in 1712. I
also designed to have given you some idea of the Lord Roscommon's and the
Lord Dorset's muse; but I find that to do this I should be obliged to
write a large volume, and that, after much pains and trouble, you would
have but an imperfect idea of all those works. Poetry is a kind of music
in which a man should have some knowledge before he pretends to judge of
it. When I give you a translation of some passages from those foreign
poets, I only prick down, and that imperfectly, their music; but then I
cannot express the taste of their harmony.

There is one English poem especially which I should despair of ever
making you understand, the title whereof is "Hudibras." The subject of
it is the Civil War in the time of the grand rebellion, and the
principles and practice of the Puritans are therein ridiculed. It is Don
Quixote, it is our "Satire Menippee" blended together. I never found so
much wit in one single book as in that, which at the same time is the
most difficult to be translated. Who would believe that a work which
paints in such lively and natural colours the several foibles and follies
of mankind, and where we meet with more sentiments than words, should
baffle the endeavours of the abl