read the worth he loves.'

In a letter to Hill Pope complained of these lines, and had the
hypocrisy to say that he never thought any great matters of his poetical
capacity, but prided himself on the superiority of his moral life. Hill
returned a masterly and incisive reproof to this ridiculous statement,
in the course of which he says:

'I am sorry to hear you say you never thought any great matters
of your poetry. It is in my opinion the characteristic you are
to hope your distinction from. To be honest is the duty of every
plain man. Nor, since the soul of poetry is sentiment, can a
great poet want morality. But your honesty you possess in common
with a million who will never be remembered; whereas your poetry
is a peculiar, that will make it impossible that you should be
forgotten.'

He adds that if Pope had not been in the spleen when he wrote, he would
have remembered that humility is a moral virtue; and how, asks the
writer, can you know that your moral life is above that of most of the
wits 'since you tell me in the same letter that many of their names were
unknown to you?'

Aaron Hill, though he could write a sensible letter, was not a wise man.
He was 'everything by turns and nothing long.' Poetry was but one of his
accomplishments, and we are told that he cultivated it 'as a relaxation
from the study of history, criticism, geography, physic, commerce,
agriculture, war, law, chemistry, and natural philosophy, to which he
devoted the greatest part of his time.'

As a poet Hill has the facility in composition exhibited by so many of
his contemporaries, and he has occasionally a pretty turn of fancy. His
last labour was the successful adaptation of Voltaire's _Merope_ to the
English stage (1749); sixteen years before he had adapted _Zara_ with
equal success.

[Sidenote: Thomas Parnell (1679-1718).]

Among the minor poets of the period an honourable place must be given to
Parnell, who possessed the soul of a poet, but gave limited expression
to it, for it was only during the later years of a short life that he
discovered where his genius lay. The friend of Pope, Arbuthnot, and
Swift, his biography has been written by Johnson, and more discursively
by his countryman Goldsmith.

Thomas Parnell was born in Dublin, 1679, entered Trinity College at the
early age of thirteen, and in 1700 obtained the degree of Master of
Arts. Having taken orders he gained preferment in the Churc