Pope is evidently putting his best foot forward, and never for a moment forgets that he is a young author writing to a recognized critic--except, indeed, when he takes the airs of an experienced rake.

We might speak of the absurd affectation displayed in the letters, were it not that such affectation is the most genuine nature in a clever boy.

Unluckily it became so ingrained in Pope as to survive his youthful follies.

Pope complacently indulges in elaborate paradoxes and epigrams of the conventional epistolary style; he is painfully anxious to be alternately sparkling and playful; his head must be full of literature; he indulges in an elaborate criticism of Statius, and points out what a sudden fall that author makes at one place from extravagant bombast; he communicates the latest efforts of his muse, and tries, one regrets to say, to get more credit for precocity and originality than fairly belongs to him; he accidentally alludes to his dog that he may bring in a translation from the Odyssey, quote Plutarch, and introduce an anecdote which he has heard from Trumbull about Charles I.; he elaborately discusses Cromwell's classical translations, adduces authorities, ventures to censure Mr.Rowe's amplifications of Lucan, and, in this respect, thinks that Breboeuf, the famous French translator, is equally a sinner, and writes a long letter as to the proper use of the caesura and the hiatus in English verse.

There are signs that the mutual criticisms became a little trying to the tempers of the correspondents.