Dr.Johnson, however, in his Lives of the Poets, abates this praise, that he may transfer the greater part of it to Dryden and Pope.

He admits that, "After about half a century of forced thoughts and rugged metre, some advances towards nature and harmony had been already made by Waller and Denham;" but, in distributing the praise of this improvement, he adds, "It may be doubted whether Waller and Denham could have over-born [_overborne_] the prejudices which had long prevailed, and which even then were sheltered by the protection of Cowley.

The new versification, as it was called, may be considered as owing its establishment to Dryden; from whose time it is apparent that English poetry has had no tendency to relapse to its former savageness."-- _Johnson's Life of Dryden: Lives_, p.206.To Pope, as the translator of Homer, he gives this praise: "His version may be said to have tuned the English tongue; for since its appearance no writer, however deficient in other powers, has wanted melody."-- _Life of Pope: Lives_, p.
567.

Such was the opinion of Johnson; but there are other critics who object to the versification of Pope, that it is "monotonous and cloying." See, in Leigh Hunt's Feast of the Poets, the following couplet, and a note upon it: "But ever since Pope spoil'd the ears of the town With his cuckoo-song verses half up and half down." 27.

The unfortunate Charles I, as well as his father James I, was a lover and promoter of letters.