1792- o« Papers works. 215 



" Candour, wirh manners, are to Benson given, 

 " To Berkeley every virtue under heaiitn," 



Why may we not discover merit in a bifhop, 'as 

 easily as in any other man ? His encomium on three 

 of their lordfliips is trifling and equivocal, and by a 

 necefsary consequence impertinent. I have mark- 

 ed in italics, two phrases which are too vulgar for 

 the flattest prose. 



In an epigram printed in the notes, he mentions a 

 lord who had offered to compound a law suit, and 

 strangely adds : 



" What on compulsion and against my will ? 

 " A lord's aquaintance ! let him fill his bill." 



The tautology of the first line is forgot in the abr 

 surdity of the second. If it was so disgraceful to be 

 in friendfhip with a lord, why does he so frequently 

 remind us of his friends among the nobility ? 



The grofsnefs of some lines in the Dunciad, is ge- 

 nerally known. His imitation of Chaucer, is in the 

 rankest language of obscenity. In his translation,. 

 from Statius, he tells us that " dreadful accents" 

 broke from the breast of OEdipus. But it is a defect 

 of a more serious nature, to put the most indecent 

 fientimentsinto the epistle ofEloisa. A fliort specimen 

 will justify my censure. Having mentioned her lo- 

 ver's misfortune fhe adds : 



" ScUl on that breast cnamour'd let me lie, 



" Still drink, delicious poison from thy eye, 



*' Pant on thy lip, and to thy breast be prefs'd, 



" Give a// if.oi/ canst and let me dream the rest." 



1 cannot read the .Rape of the Lock without weari« 

 jicfc and disgust ; and every private critic of my 



