Hill has the merit of having turned the tables upon Pope, who had put him into the treatise on the _Bathos_, and then into the _Dunciad_, where, however, the lines have more of compliment than censure, since he is made to mount 'far off among the swans of Thames.' Irritated by a note in the _Dunciad_, Hill replied in a long poem entitled _The Progress of Wit, a Caveat_, which opens with the following pointed lines: 'Tuneful Alexis, on the Thames' fair side, The ladies' plaything, and the Muses' pride; With merit popular, with wit polite, Easy though vain, and elegant though light; Desiring, and deserving others' praise, Poorly accepts a fame he ne'er repays; Unborn to cherish, sneakingly approves, And wants the soul to spread 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).]