'M. de Crousaz has lately given us a refutation of the ethic epistles of Mr Pope, which I have read; but it did not please me. I will not take upon me to say, which of these two authors is in the right; but I am persuaded, that the book of the former will never excite the reader to do any one virtuous action, whereas _our zeal for every thing great and good is awakened by that of_ POPE[100].' The Essay on Man, he says, 'affords an egregious instance of the predominance of genius, the dazzling splendour of imagery, and the seductive powers of eloquence. The reader feels his mind full, though he learns NOTHING; and when he meets it in its new array, no longer knows the talk of his mother, and his nurse[101].' If the conversations of Dr Johnson's mother and his nurse were equal to Mr Pope's verses, it is a pity the Doctor had not preserved them. He could hardly have spent his time so well. And it is a wonder that with so many rare opportunities of improvement, the Doctor has never yet eclipsed his nurse. Voltaire pronounces Pope's Essay to be the finest didactick poem in the world, and he would no doubt have replied to the Doctor's objections in that tone of contempt with which the Doctor replied to some of his--'These are the petty cavils of petty minds[102].' In the Essay on Man 'so little was any evil tendency discovered, that, as innocence is unsuspicious, many read it for a manual of piety[103];'--and will continue to read it, when the cavils of Dr Johnson are forgotten or despised. 'He (Pope) nursed in his mind a foolish disesteem of Kings.' And again, 'He gratified that ambitious petulance with which he affected to insult the great[104].' Dr Johnson himself is by no means remarkable for his respect to the great. In the preface to his folio Dictionary, he tells us, that it was written 'without any patronage of the _great_,' which is a mistake; for he had published a pamphlet, some years before, wherein he acknowledges, that Chesterfield had patronized him; and why the Doctor should retract his own words, it is hard to say; for Chesterfield continued his friend to the last; and such a man was very likely _the strongest spoke in the Doctor's wheel_. But his Lordship is now dead, and the Doctor is always and eminently _grateful_. 'It has been maintained by some, _who love to talk of what they do not know_, that pastoral is the _most antient_ poetry.' But in the next period, 'pastoral poetry was the _first_ employment of the human imagination[105].' The Doctor, therefore, by his own account, is one of those, _who love to talk of_ (and what is yet worse, to assert) _what they do not know_. In North America, the natives have no conception of pastoral life among themselves, and their poetry, such as it is, hath no relation to that state of society.