'That it is a wretched rhapsody, impudently writ in emulation of the Cooper's Hill of Sir John Denham.[151] The author of it is obscure, is ambiguous, is affected, is temerarious, is barbarous.'[152] But the author of the Dispensary, DR GARTH, in the preface to his poem of Claremont, differs from this opinion: 'Those who have seen these two excellent poems of Cooper's Hill and Windsor Forest--the one written by Sir John Denham, the other by Mr Pope--will shew a great deal of candour if they approve of this.' Of the Epistle of ELOISA, we are told by the obscure writer of a poem called Sawney, 'That because Prior's Henry and Emma charmed the finest tastes, our author writ his Eloise in opposition to it, but forgot innocence and virtue: if you take away her tender thoughts and her fierce desires, all the rest is of no value.' In which, methinks, his judgment resembleth that of a French tailor on a villa and gardens by the Thames: 'All this is very fine, but take away the river and it is good for nothing.' But very contrary hereunto was the opinion of MR PRIOR himself, saying in his Alma-- 'O Abelard! ill-fated youth, Thy tale will justify this truth. But well I weet thy cruel wrong Adorns a nobler poet's song: Dan Pope, for thy misfortune grieved, With kind concern and skill has weaved A silken web; and ne'er shall fade Its colours: gently has he laid The mantle o'er thy sad distress, And Venus shall the texture bless,'[153] &c. Come we now to his translation of the ILIAD, celebrated by numerous pens, yet shall it suffice to mention the indefatigable SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE, KT., who (though otherwise a severe censurer of our author) yet styleth this a 'laudable translation.'[154] That ready writer, MR OLDMIXON, in his forementioned essay, frequently commends the same. And the painful MR LEWIS THEOBALD thus extols it: 'The spirit of Homer breathes all through this translation.--I am in doubt whether I should most admire the justness to the original, or the force and beauty of the language, or the sounding variety of the numbers: but when I find all these meet, it puts me in mind of what the poet says of one of his heroes, that he alone raised and flung with ease a weighty stone, that two common men could not lift from the ground; just so, one single person has performed in this translation what I once despaired to have seen done by the force of several masterly hands.'[155] Indeed, the same gentleman appears to have changed his sentiment in his Essay on the Art of Sinking in Reputation (printed in Mist's Journal, March 30, 1728,) where he says thus:--'In order to sink in reputation, let him take into his head to descend into Homer (let the world wonder, as it will, how the devil he got there), and pretend to do him into English, so his version denote his neglect of the manner how.' Strange variation! We are told in MIST'S JOURNAL, JUNE 8,