Upon a passage in Spence’s Criticism, at p. 45., Pope says:—­“I think this too nice.”  And the couplet objected to by Spence—­

  “Deep in my soul the trust shall lodge secur’d,
   With ribs of steel, and marble heart immur’d,”

he pronounced “very bad.”  And of some tumid metaphors he says, “All too forced and over-charged.”

At p. 51.  Spence says:—­“Does it not sound mean to talk of lopping a man? of lopping away all his posterity? or of trimming him with brazen sheers?  Is there not something mean, where a goddess is represented as beck’ning and waving her deathless hands; or, when the gods are dragging those that have provok’d them to destruction by the Links of fate?” Of the two first instances, Pope says:—­“Intended to be comic in a sarcastic speech.”  And of the last:—­“I think not at all mean, see the Greek.”  The remarks are, however, expunged.

The longest remonstrance occurs at p. 6. of the Fifth Dialogue.  Spence had written:—­“The Odyssey, as a moral poem, exceeds all the writings of the ancients:  it is perpetual in forming the manners, and in instructing the mind; it sets off the duties of life more fully as well as more agreeably than the Academy or Lyceum. Horace ventured to say thus much of the Iliad, and certainly it may be more justly said of this later production by the same hand.”  For the words in Italics Pope has substituted:—­“Horace, who was so well acquainted with the tenets of both, has given Homer’s poems the preference to either:”  and says in a note:—­“I think you are mistaken in limiting this commendation and judgment of Horace to the Iliad.  He says it, at the beginning of his Epistle, of Homer in general, and afterwards proposes both poems equally as examples of morality; though the Iliad be mentioned first:  but then follows—­’Rursus quid virtus et quid sapientia possit, Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssem,’ &c. of the Odyssey.”

At p. 34.  Spence says:—­“There seems to be something mean and awkward in this image:—­

  “’His loose head tottering as with wine opprest
   Obliquely drops, and nodding knocks his breast.’”

Here Pope says:—­“Sure these are good lines. {397} They are not mine.”  Of other passages which please him, he occasionally says,—­“This is good sense.”  And on one occasion, where Spence had objected, he says candidly:—­“This is bad, indeed,”—­“and this.”

At p. 50.  Spence writes:—­“There’s a passage which I remember I was mightily pleased with formerly in reading Cervantes, without seeing any reason for it at that time; tho’ I now imagine that which took me in it comes under this view.  Speaking of Don Quixote, the first time that adventurer came in sight of the ocean, he expresses his sentiments on this occasion in the following manner:—­’He saw the sea, which he had never seen before, and thought it much bigger than the river at Salamanca.’” On this occasion Pope suggests,—­“Dr. Swift’s fable to Ph——­s, of the two asses and Socrates.”