other writers that might be accommodated to his present purpose.

Thefe benefits of nature he improved by inceffant and unwearied diligence; he had recourfe to every fource of intelligence, and loft no opportunity of information; he confulted the living as well as the dead; he read his compcfitions to his friends, and was never content with mediocrity when excellence could be attained. He confidered poetry as the bufinefs of his life, and however he might seem to lament his occupation, he followed it with conftancy; to make verfes was his first labour, and to mend them was his laft.

From his attention to poetry he was never diverted. If converfation offered

any

any thing that could be improved, he committed it to paper; if a thought, or perhaps an expreffion more happy than was common, rofe to his mind, he was careful to write it; an independent diftich was preferved for an opportunity of insertion, and some little fragments have been found containing lines, or parts of lines, to be wrought upon at fome other time.

He was one of thofe few whofe labour is their pleasure he was never elevated to negligence, nor wearied to impatience; he never paffed a fault unamended by indifference, nor quitted it by despair. He laboured his works firft to gain re

putation, and afterwards to keep it.

Of compofition there are different methods. Some employ at once memory and invention, and, with little intermediate ufe of the pen, form and polish large maffes by continued meditation, and write their productions only when, in their own opinion, they have completed them. It is related of Virgil, that his cuftom was to pour out a great number of verfes in the morning, and pass the day in retrenching exuberances and correcting inaccuracies. The method of Pope, as may be collected from his tranflation, was to write his first thoughts in his firft words, and gradually to amplify, decorate, rectify, and refine them.

With

With fuch faculties, and fuch difpofitions, he excelled every other writer in poetical prudence; he wrote in fuch a manner as might expofe him to few hazards. He ufed almoft always the fame fabrick of verfe; and, indeed, by those few effays which he made of any other, he did not enlarge his reputation. Of this uniformity the certain confequence was readiness and dexterity. By perpetual practice, language had in his mind a fyftematical arrangement; having always the fame ufe for words, he had words fo felected and combined as to be ready at his call. This increase of facility he confeffed himself to have perceived in the progrefs of his tranfla

tion.

R 3

But

But what was yet of more importance, his effufions were always voluntary, and his fubjects chofen by himfelf. His independence fecured him from drudging at a tafk, and labouring upon a barren topick: he never exchanged praife for money, nor opened

fhop of condolence or congratulation. His poems, therefore, were fcarce ever temporary. He fuffered coronations and royal marriages to pass without a fong, and derived no opportunities from recent events, or popularity from the accidental difpofition of his readers. He was never reduced to the neceffity of foliciting the fun to fhine upon a birth-day, of calling the Graces and Virtues to a wedding, or of faying what multitudes

have