If the reader would indulge his curiosity any farther in the comparison of particulars, he may read the first Pastoral of Philips, with the second of his contemporary, and the fourth and fifth of the former, with the fourth and first of the latter; where several parallel places will occur to every one.

Having now shewn some parts, in which these two writers may be compared, it is a justice I owe to Mr. Philips, to discover those in which no man can compare with him.  First, the beautiful rusticity, of which I shall now produce two instances, out of a hundred not yet quoted.

  O woeful day!  O day of woe, quoth he,
  And woeful I, who live the day to see!

That simplicity of diction, the melancholy flowing of the numbers, the solemnity of the sound, and the easy turn of the words, are extremely elegant.

In another Pastoral, a shepherd utters a Dirge, not much inferior to the former in the following lines.

  Ah me the while! ah me, the luckless day! 
  Ah luckless lad, the rather might I say;
  Ah silly I! more silly than my sheep,
  Which on the flow’ry plains I once did keep.

How he still charms the ear, with his artful repetition of the epithets; and how significant is the last verse!  I defy the most common reader to repeat them, without feeling some motions of compassion.  In the next place, I shall rank his Proverbs in which I formerly observed he excels:  For example,

  A rolling stone is ever bare of moss;
  And, to their cost, green years old proverbs cross,
—­He that late lies down, as late will rise,
  And sluggard like, till noon-day snoring lies. 
  Against ill-luck, all cunning foresight fails;
  Whether we sleep or wake, it nought avails. 
—­Nor fear, from upright sentence wrong,

Lastly, His excellent dialect, which alone might prove him the eldest born of Spencer, and the only true Arcadian, &c.

Thus far the comparison between the merit of Mr. Pope and Mr. Philips, as writers of Pastoral, made by the author of this paper in the Guardian, after the publication of which, the enemies of Pope exulted, as in one particular species of poetry, upon which he valued himself, he was shewn to be inferior to his contemporary.  For some time they enjoyed their triumph; but it turned out at last to their unspeakable mortification.

The paper in which the comparison is inserted, was written by Mr. Pope himself.  Nothing could have so effectually defeated the design of diminishing his reputation, as this method, which had a very contrary effect.  He laid down some false principles, upon these he reasoned, and by comparing his own and Philips’s Pastorals, upon such principles it was no great compliment to the latter, that he wrote more agreeable to notions which are in themselves false.