'His (Pope's) version may be said to have tuned the English tongue; for, since its appearance, no writer[45], however deficient in other powers, has wanted _melody_[46].' This is wild enough; but, of Gray's two longest Odes, 'the language is laboured into _harshness_.' Hammond's verses 'never glide in a stream of _melody_.' The diction of Collins 'was often _harsh_, unskilfully laboured, and injudiciously selected. His lines, commonly, are of slow motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants.' Of the style of Savage, 'The general fault is, _harshness_.' The diction of Shenstone 'is often _harsh_, improper, and affected,' &c. Of these five poets, some were not born when Pope's version was published; and, of the rest, not one had penned a line now extant. They are all here charged, in the strongest terms, with _harshness_; and yet, (_mirabile dictu!_) since the appearance of Pope's version, 'no writer, however deficient in other powers, has wanted _melody_.' It is no less curious, that the author of this wonder-working translation is himself charged with want of melody; and that too in a poem written many years after the appearance of Pope's Homer. 'The essay on man contains more lines unsuccessfully laboured, more _harshness_ of diction, more thoughts imperfectly expressed, more levity without elegance, and more heaviness without strength,[47]' &c. 'Gray thought his language more poetical, as it was more remote from common use[48].' This assertion is not entirely without foundation, but it is very far from being quite true. 'Finding in Dryden, honey _redolent of spring_, an expression that reaches the utmost limits of our language, Gray drove it a little more beyond common apprehension, by making _gale_ to be _redolent of joy and youth_[49].' The censure is just. But Dr Johnson is the last man alive, who should blame an author for driving our language to its utmost limits: For a very great part of his life has been spent in corrupting and confounding it. In some verses to a Lady, he talks of his _arthritic_ pains[50], an epithet not very suitable to the dialect of Parnassus. Dr Johnson himself cannot always write common sense. 'In a short time many were content to be shewn beauties which _they could not see_[51].' He must here mean--'Beauties which they could not have seen;'--for it is needless to add, that no man can be shewn what he cannot see.