e now
and then in Fairyland, among imaginary beings, is a pleasing variety, and
helps to distinguish the poet from the orator or historian, but to be
always there is irksome.

_Boileau_.--Is not Spenser likewise blamable for confounding the
Christian with the Pagan theology in some parts of his poem?

_Pope_.--Yes; he had that fault in common with Dante, with Ariosto, and
with Camoens.

_Boileau_.--Who is the poet that arrived soon after you in Elysium, whom
I saw Spenser lead in and present to Virgil, as the author of a poem
resembling the "Georgics"? On his head was a garland of the several
kinds of flowers that blow in each season, with evergreens intermixed.

_Pope_.--Your description points out Thomson. He painted nature exactly,
and with great strength of pencil. His imagination was rich, extensive,
and sublime: his diction bold and glowing, but sometimes obscure and
affected. Nor did he always know when to stop, or what to reject.

_Boileau_.--I should suppose that he wrote tragedies upon the Greek
model. For he is often admitted into the grove of Euripides.

_Pope_.--He enjoys that distinction both as a tragedian and as a
moralist. For not only in his plays, but all his other works, there is
the purest morality, animated by piety, and rendered more touching by the
fine and delicate sentiments of a most tender and benevolent heart.

_Boileau_.--St. Evremond has brought me acquainted with Waller. I was
surprised to find in his writings a politeness and gallantry which the
French suppose to be appropriated only to theirs. His genius was a
composition which is seldom to be met with, of the sublime and the
agreeable. In his comparison between himself and Apollo, as the lover of
Daphne, and in that between Amoret and Sacharissa, there is a _finesse_
and delicacy of wit which the most elegant of our writers have never
exceeded. Nor had Sarrazin or Voiture the art of praising more genteelly
the ladies they admired. But his epistle to Cromwell, and his poem on
the death of that extraordinary man, are written with a force and
greatness of manner which give him a rank among the poets of the first
class.

_Pope_.--Mr. Waller was unquestionably a very fine writer. His Muse was
as well qualified as the Graces themselves to dress out a Venus; and he
could even adorn the brows of a conqueror with fragrant and beautiful
wreaths. But he had some puerile and low thoughts, which unaccountably
mixed with the el