This poem furnished the hint to Mr. Pope to write his Dunciad; and it must be owned the latter has been more happy in the execution of his design, as having more leisure for the performance; but in Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe there are some lines so extremely pungent, that I am not quite certain if Pope has any where exceeded them.

In the year wherein he was deprived of the laurel, he published the life of St. Francis Xavier, translated from the French of father Dominic Bouchours.  In 1693 came out a translation of Juvenal and Persius; in which the first, third, sixth, tenth, and fifteenth satires of Juvenal, and Persius entire, were done by Mr. Dryden, who prefixed a long and ingenious discourse, by way of dedication, to the earl of Dorset.  In this address our author takes occasion a while to drop his reflexions on Juvenal; and to lay before his lordship a plan for an epic poem:  he observes, that his genius never much inclined him to the stage; and that he wrote for it rather from necessity than inclination.  He complains, that his circumstances are such as not to suffer him to pursue the bent of his own genius, and then lays down a plan upon which an epic poem might be written:  to which, says he, I am more inclined.  Whether the plan proposed is faulty or no, we are not at present to consider; one thing is certain, a man of Mr. Dryden’s genius would have covered by the rapidity of the action, the art of the design, and the beauty of the poetry, whatever might have been defective in the plan, and produced a work which have been the boast of the nation.

We cannot help regretting on this occasion, that Dryden’s fortune was not easy enough to enable him, with convenience and leisure, to pursue a work that might have proved an honour to himself, and reflected a portion thereof on all, who should have appeared his encouragers on this occasion.

In 1695 Mr. Dryden published a translation in prose of Du Fresnoy’s Art of Painting, with a preface containing a parallel between painting and poetry.  Mr. Pope has addressed a copy of verses to Mr. Jervas in praise of Dryden’s translation.  In 1697 his translation of Virgil’s works came out.  This translation has passed thro’ many editions, and of all the attempts which have been made to render Virgil into English.  The critics, I think, have allowed that Dryden[5] best succeeded:  notwithstanding as he himself says, when he began it, he was past the grand climacteric! so little influence it seems, age had over him, that he retained his judgment and fire in full force to the last.  Mr. Pope in his preface to Homer says, if Dryden had lived to finish what he began of Homer, he, (Mr. Pope) would not have attempted it after him, ’No more, says he, than I would his Virgil, his version of whom (notwithstanding some human errors) is the most noble and spirited translation I know in any language.’

Dr. Trap charges Mr. Dryden with grossly mistaking his author’s sense in many places; with adding or retrenching as his turn is best served with either; and with being least a translator where he shines most as a poet; whereas it is a just rule laid down by lord Roscommon, that a translator in regard to his author should