ADVERTISEMENT. N order to account for the anachronisms that appear in this effay, it is necessary and respectful to inform the reader, that this volume was printed, as far as the 201ft page, above twenty years ago. The author begs leave to add, that he flatters himself, that no obfervations in this work can be so perversely mifinterpreted and tortured, as to make him infinuate, contrary to his opinion and inclination, that POPE was not a great poet: he only fays and thinks, he was not the greatest. He imagined his meaning would have been perceived, and his motives for compofing this effay would have been clearly known, from the paffage of Quintilian, prefixed to the first volume of it; which paffage implies, that as there were readers at Rome, who inverted the order of poetical excellence, and who preferred Lucilius to Virgil; fo there might be readers in England, fo devoted to POPE, as to prefer him to Milton; and the author thought and knew there were actually many fuch readers and judges; who feemed not to recollect, that, in every language, he is the trueft and most genuiné poet, whose works moft powerfully strike the imagination with what is Great, Beautiful, and New. A N ESSAY ON THE WRITINGS and GENIUS O F POP P E. F SECT. VII. Of the TEMPLE of FAME. EW difquifitions are more amusing, or perhaps more inftructive, than those which relate to the rife and gradual increase of literature in any kingdom: And among the various fpecies of literature, the origin and progress of poetry, however shallow reafoners may despise it, is a fubject of no fmall utility. For the manners and cuf Vol. II. B toms, |