magician's rod, she had called up spawn innumerable of authors, lyric, epic, dramatic, pastoral, each after his kind. But by whom had France moved in this creation as the chief demi-urgus? By whom, Mr. Pope? Name, name, Mr. Pope! 'Ay,' we must suppose the unhappy man to reply, 'that's the very question which I was going to answer, if you wouldn't be so violent.' 'Well, answer it then. Take your own time, but answer; for we don't mean to be put off without some kind of answer.' 'Listen, then,' said Pope, 'and I'll whisper it into your ear; for it's a sort of secret.' Now think, reader, of a _secret_ upon a matter like this, which (if true at all) must be known to the antipodes. However, let us have the secret. 'The secret,' replied Pope, 'is, that some time in the reign of Charles the Second--when I won't be positive, but I'm sure it was after the Restoration--three gentlemen wrote an eighteen-penny pamphlet.' 'Good! And what were the gentlemen's names?' 'One was Edmund Waller, the poet; one was Mr. Go-dolphin; and the other was Lord Dorset.' 'This trinity of wits, then, you say, Mr. Pope, produced a mountain, price eighteen-pence, and this mountain produced a mouse.' 'Oh, no! it was just the other way. They produced a mouse, price eighteen-pence, and this mouse produced a mountain, viz., the total English literature.' O day and night, but this is wondrous strange! The total English literature--not the tottle only, but the tottle of the whole, like an oak and the masts of some great amiral, that once slept in an acorn--absolutely lying hid in an eighteen-penny pamphlet! And what, now, might this pamphlet be about? Was it about the curing of bacon, or the sublimer art of sowing moonshine broadcast? It was, says Pope, if you _must_ know everything, a translation from the French. And judiciously chosen; for it was the _worst_ (and surely everybody must think it proper to keep back the _best_, until the English had earned a right to such luxuries by showing a proper sense of their value)--the _worst_ it was, and by very much the worst, of all Corneille's dramas; and its name was 'Pompey.' Pompey, was it? And so, then, from Pompey's loins we, the whole armies of English _litterateurs_, grubs and eagles, are lineally descended. So says Pope. So he _must_ say, In obedience to his own line of argument. And, this being the case, one would be glad to have a look at Pompey. It is hard upon us _literati_, that are the children of Pompey, not to have a look at the author of our existence. But our chance of such a look is small indeed. For Pompey, you are to understand, reader, never advanced so far as to a second edition. That was a poor return on the part of England for Pompey's services. And my too sceptical mind at one time inclined to doubt even Pompey's _first_ edition; which was wrong, and could have occurred only to a lover of paradoxes. For Warton (not Tom, but Joe) had actually seen Pompey, and records his opinion of him,