regard to this fair antagonist, than any other critic upon his works.  He confessed that he had received great helps from her, and only thought she had (through a prodigious, and almost superstitious, fondness for Homer) endeavoured to make him appear without any fault, or weakness, and stamp a perfection on his works, which is no where to be found.  He wrote her a very obliging letter, in which he confessed himself exceedingly sorry that he ever should have displeased so excellent a wit, and she, on the other hand, with a goodness and frankness peculiar to her, protested to forgive it, so that there remained no animosities between those two great admirers and translators of Homer.

Mr. Pope, by his successful translation of the Iliad, as we have before remarked, drew upon him the envy and raillery of a whole tribe of writers.  Though he did not esteem any particular man amongst his enemies of consequence enough to provoke an answer, yet when they were considered collectively, they offered excellent materials for a general satire.  This satire he planned and executed with so extraordinary a mastery, that it is by far the most compleat poem of our author’s; it discovers more invention, and a higher effort of genius, than any other production of his.  The hint was taken from Mr. Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe, but as it is more general, so it is more pleasing.  The Dunciad is so universally read, that we reckon it superfluous to give any further account of it here; and it would be an unpleasing task to trace all the provocations and resentments, which were mutually discovered upon this occasion.  Mr. Pope was of opinion, that next to praising good writers, there was a merit in exposing bad ones, though it does not hold infallibly true, that each person stigmatized as a dunce, was genuinely so.  Something must be allowed to personal resentment; Mr. Pope was a man of keen passions; he felt an injury strongly, retained a long remembrance of it, and could very pungently repay it.  Some of the gentlemen, however, who had been more severely lashed than the rest, meditated a revenge, which redounds but little to their honour.  They either intended to chastize him corporally, or gave it out that they had really done so, in order to bring shame upon Mr. Pope, which, if true, could only bring shame upon themselves.

While Mr. Pope enjoyed any leisure from severer applications to study, his friends were continually solliciting him to turn his thoughts towards something that might be of lasting use to the world, and engage no more in a war with dunces who were now effectually humbled.  Our great dramatic poet Shakespear had pass’d through several hands, some of whom were very reasonably judged not to have understood any part of him tolerably, much less were capable to correct or revise him.