Ver. 311. _False eloquence, &c._] This simile is beautiful. For the false colouring given to objects by the prismatic glass is owing to its untwisting, by its obliquities, those threads of light which nature had put together, in order to spread over its work an ingenious and simple candour, that should not hide but only heighten the native complexion of the objects. And false expression is nothing else but the straining and divaricating the parts of true expression; and then daubing them over with what the rhetoricians very properly term colours, in lieu of that candid light, now lost, which was reflected from them in their natural state, while sincere and entire. Ver. 364. _'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense._] The judicious introduction of this precept is remarkable. The poets, and even some of the best of them, have been so fond of the beauty arising from this trivial observance, that their practice has violated the very end of the precept, which is the increase of harmony; and so they could but raise an echo, did not care whose ears they offended by its dissonance. To remedy this abuse therefore, our poet, by the introductory line, would insinuate, that harmony is always to be presupposed as observed, though it may and ought to be perpetually varied, so as to produce the effect here recommended. Ver. 365. _The sound must seem an echo to the sense._] Lord Roscommon says, The sound is still a comment to the sense. They are both well expressed, although so differently; for Lord Roscommon is showing how the sense is assisted by the sound; Mr. Pope, how the sound is assisted by the sense. Ver. 402. _Which, from the first, &c._] Genius is the same in all ages; but its fruits are various, and more or less excellent as they are checked or matured by the influence of government or religion upon them. Hence in some parts of literature the ancients excel; in others, the moderns, just as those accidental circumstances occurred.