rdian in which he ridiculed the Pastorals of his rival and
applauded his own. "With an unexampled and unequalled artifice of
irony," says Dr. Johnson, "though he himself has always the advantage,
he gives the preference to Philips." In the opening sentence of the
essay Pope is described as "a gentleman whose character it is, that he
takes the greatest care of his works before they are published, and the
least concern for them afterwards."[24] He followed his invariable habit
of boasting his pre-eminence in the very virtue he was defying, and
attached this vaunt to a criticism in which his morbid "concern" for his
works had induced him to become his own reviewer and eulogist. He was
liberal in his self-laudation, and assured the public that though his
Pastorals might not fulfil the strict definition laid down in the
Guardian, they were, like Virgil's, "something better." To prove the
inferiority of Philips he selected three of his worst passages, and
contrasted them with three of his own. He picked out a dozen foolish
lines from his rival, and alleged that they were specimens of his
ordinary manner. He subjoined some ludicrous imitations of his style,
which are only not an outrageous caricature because they have no
resemblance at all to the original. The faults of Philips did not
require to be exaggerated. The absurdities of his satirist are different
in kind, but they are not less in degree. Some defects they had in
common, and as self-love is blind, Pope did not perceive that most of
his comments recoiled upon himself. He objected that Philips had
introduced wolves into England, where they formerly existed, and the
critic forgot that the imaginary golden age, which he maintained in his
Discourse was the only era of Pastoral, must be assigned to a period
long anterior to their extirpation. Or if the piping shepherds, who
composed and chanted poems, were to be considered as existing
personages, credibility was not more violated in supposing that Windsor
Forest was still haunted by wolves than by heathen gods and
goddesses,--in imagining the lambs to be preyed upon by a wild beast,
than in picturing Christian bards employed in sacrificing them to Mrs.
Tempest with an exact observance of pagan rites. He took especial credit
for having kept to the circumstances proper to a particular season of
the year, and a certain time of the day, and exposed the ignorance of
Philips, who, says he, "by a poetical creation, hath raised up f