He "dares not" attack hunting, he says--and, indeed, such an attack requires some courage even at the present day--but he evidently has no sympathy with huntsmen, and has to borrow his description from Statius, which was hardly the way to get the true local colour.

_Windsor Forest_, however, like _Cooper's Hill_, speedily diverges into historical and political reflections.

The barbarity of the old forest laws, the poets Denham and Cowley and Surrey, who had sung on the banks of the Thames, and the heroes who made Windsor illustrious, suggest obvious thoughts, put into verses often brilliant, though sometimes affected, varied by a compliment to Trumbull and an excessive eulogy of Granville, to whom the poem is inscribed.

The whole is skilfully adapted to the time by a brilliant eulogy upon the peace which was concluded just as the poem was published.

The Whig poet Tickell, soon to be Pope's rival, was celebrating the same "lofty theme" on his "artless reed," and introducing a pretty little compliment to Pope.