e with
unvaried liberality; and perhaps his character may receive some
illustration, if he be compared with his master.

Integrity of understanding and nicety of discernment were not allotted
in a less proportion to Dryden than to Pope. The rectitude of Dryden's
mind was sufficiently shown by the dismission of his poetical
prejudices, and the rejection of unnatural thoughts and rugged
numbers. But Dryden never desired to apply all the judgment that he
had. He wrote, and profest to write, merely for the people; and when
he pleased others he contented himself. He spent no time in struggles
to rouse latent powers; he never attempted to make that better which
was already good, not often to mend what he must have known to be
faulty. He wrote, as he tells us, with very little consideration; when
occasion or necessity called upon him, he poured out what the present
moment happened to supply, and, when once it had passed the press,
ejected it from his mind; for when he had no pecuniary interest, he
had no further solicitude.

Pope was not content to satisfy: he desired to excel, and therefore
always endeavored to do his best: he did not court the candor, but
dared the judgment of his reader, and expecting no indulgence from
others, he showed none to himself. He examined lines and words with
minute and punctilious observation, and retouched every part with
indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing to be forgiven.

For this reason he kept his pieces very long in his hands, while he
considered and reconsidered them. The only poems which can be
supposed to have been written with such regard to the times as might
hasten their publication, were the two satires of "Thirty-eight," of
which Dodsley[25] told me that they were brought to him by the author
that they might be fairly copied. "Almost every line," he said, "was
then written twice over. I gave him a clean transcript, which he sent
some time afterward to me for the press with almost every line written
twice over a second time."

His declaration, that his care for his works ceased at their
publication, was not strictly true. His parental attention never
abandoned them; what he found amiss in the first edition, he silently
corrected in those that followed. He appears to have revised the
"Iliad," and freed it from some of its imperfections; and the "Essay
on Criticism" received many improvements after its first appearance.
It will seldom be found that he altered withou