fury are equally ridiculous.  ’I regard him (says he) as an enemy, not so much to me, as to my king, to my country, and to my religion.  The epidemic madness of the times has given him reputation, and reputation is power; and that has made him dangerous.  Therefore I look on it as my duty to king George, and to the liberties of my country, more dear than life to me, of which I have now been 40 years a constant assertor, &c.  I look upon it as my duty I say to do,—­Reader observe what,—­To pull the lion’s skin from this little ass, which popular error has thrown round him, and shew that this little author, who has been lately so much in vogue, has neither sense in his thoughts, nor English in his expressions.  See his Remarks on Homer, Pref. p. 2. and p. 91.

Speaking of Mr. Pope’s Windsor-Forrest, he says, ’It is a wretched rhapsody, impudently writ in emulation of Cooper’s-Hill.  The author of it is obscure, is ambiguous, is affected, is temerarious, is barbarous.’

After these provocations, it is no wonder that Pope should take an opportunity of recording him in his Dunciad; and yet he had some esteem for our author’s learning and genius.  Mr. Dennis put his name to every thing he wrote against him, which Mr. Pope considered as a circumstance of candour.  He pitied him as a man subject to the dominion of invidious passions, than which no severer sensations can tear the heart of man.

In the first Book of his Dunciad. line 103, he represents Dullness taking a view of her sons; and thus mentions Dennis,

  She saw slow Philips creep like Tate’s poor page,
  And all the mighty mad in Dennis rage.

He mentions him again slightly in his second Book, line 230, and in his third Book, line 165, taking notice of a quarrel between him and Mr. Gildon, he says,

  Ah Dennis!  Gildon ah! what ill-starr’d rage
  Divides a friendship long confirm’d by age? 
  Blockheads, with reason, wicked wits abhor,
  But fool with fool, is barbr’ous civil war,
  Embrace, embrace, my sons! be foes no more! 
  Nor glad vile poets, with true critic’s gore.

Our author gained little by his opposition to Pope, in which he must either have violated his judgment, or been under the influence of the strongest prejudice that ever blinded the eyes of any man; for not to admire the writings of this excellent poet, is an argument of a total deprivation of taste, which in other respects does not appear to be the case of Mr. Dennis.

We shall now take a view of our author in the light of a dramatist.  In the year 1697 a comedy of his was acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane, called A Plot and No Plot, dedicated to the Earl of Sunderland.  The scope of this piece is to ridicule the credulity and principles of the Jacobites, the moral of which is this, ’That there are in all parties, persons who find it their interest to deceive the rest, and that one half of every faction makes