Taffo and Guarini wrote Favole Bofchereccie, or Silvan Dramas; and all nations of Europe filled volumes with Thyrfis and Damon, and Theftylis and Phyllis.

Philips thinks it fomewhat strange to conceive how, in an age fo addicted to the Mufes, paftoral Poetry never comes to be fo much as thought upon. His wonder feems very unfeafonable; there had never, from the time of Spenfer, wanted writers to talk occafionally of Arcadia and Strephon; and half the book, in which he first tried his powers, confifts of dialogues on queen Mary's death, between Tityrus and Corydon, or Mopfus and Menaleas. A fèries or book of Paftorals, however, I know not that any one had then lately published.

.

Not

4

Not long afterwards Pope made the first display of his powers in four Pastorals, written in a very different form. Philips had taken Spenfer, and Pope took Virgil for his pattern. Philips endeavoured to be natural, Pope laboured to be elegant.

Philips was now favoured by Addifon, and by Addison's companions, who were very willing to push him into reputation. The Guardian gave an account of Paftoral, partly critical, and partly hiftorical; in which, when the merit of the moderns is compared, Taffo and Guarini are cenfured for remote thoughts and unnatural refinements; and, upon the whole, the Italians and French are all excluded from rural poetry, and the

pipe of the Paftoral Mufe is transmitted by lawful inheritance from Theocritus to Virgil, from Virgil to Spenfer, and from Spenfer to Philips.

With this inauguration of Philips, his rival Pope was not much delighted; he therefore drew a comparison of Philips's performance with his own, in which, with an unexampled and unequalled artifice of irony, though he has himself always the advantage, he gives the preference to Philips. The defign of aggrandifing himself he difguifed with fuch dexterity, that, though Addifon difcovered it, Steele was deceived, and was afraid of difpleafing Pope by publishing his paper. Published however it was (Guard. 40), and from that time Pope and

Philips

Philips lived in a perpetual reciprocation of malevolence.

In poetical powers, of either praise or fatire, there was no proportion between the combatants; but Philips, though he could not prevail by wit, hoped to hurt Pope with another weapon, and charged him, as Pope thought, with Addison's approbation, as difaffected to the government.

Even with this he was not satisfied; for, indeed, there is no appearance that any regard was paid to his clamours. He proceeded to groffer infults, and hung up a rod at Button's, with which he threatened to chaftife Pope, who appears to have been extremely exafperated; for in the first edition of his

Let

Letters he calls Philips rafcal, and in the laft ftill charges him with detaining in his hands the fubfcriptions delivered to him by the Hanover Club.

I fuppofe it was never fufpected that he meant to appropriate the money; he only delayed, and with fufficient meannefs, the gratification of him by whose profperity he was pained.

Men fometimes fuffer by injudicious kindness.; Philips became ridiculous, without his own fault, by the abfurd admiration of his friends, who decorated him with honorary garlands which the firft breath of contradiction blafted.

When upon the fucceffion of the House of Hanover every Whig expected to be happy, Philips feems to

have