4O TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS
Concanen, yet more impudent, publishes at length the Two
most SACRED NAMES in this Nation, as members of the
Dunciad<M
This is prodigious! yet it is almost as strange, that in the midst
of these invectives his greatest Enemies have (I know not how) 5
born testimony to some merit in him.
Mr. THEOBALD,
in censuring his Shakespear, declares, "He has so great an
"esteejn for Mr. Pope, and so high an opinion of his genius and
"excellencies; that, notwithstanding he professes a veneration 10
"almost rising to Idolatry for the writings of this inimitable poet,
*ehe would be very loth even to do him justice, at the expence of
"that other gentleman** character*."
Mr. CHARLES GXLDON,
after having violently attacked him in many pieces, at last came i5
to wish from his heart, "That Mr. Pope would be prevailed
"upon to give us Ovid's Epistles by his hand, for it is certain we
"see the original of Sappho to Phaon with much more life and
"likeness in his version, than in that of Sir Car. Scrope* And this
"(he adds) is the more to be wished, because in the English so
"tongue we have scarce any thing truly and naturally written
"upon Love?." He also, in taxing Sir Richard Blackmore for his
heterodox opinions of Homer, challengcth him to answer what
Mr. Pope hath said in his preface to that poet,
Mr. OLDMIXON £5
calls him a great master of our tongue; declares "the purity and
"perfection of the English language to be found in his Homer;
**and, saying there are more good verses in Dryden's Virgil than
"in any other work, excepts this of our author onlyV
4 it is ... strange] is it no less strange
25 ~P* 4*> 1- 5> M*. OLDMIXON ... that way/* And] Om. xystga.
* A Last of Persons, &c. at the end of the forementioned Collection of all the
Letters, Essays, &c.
r Introduction to his Shakespear restored, in quarto, p. 3.
s Commentary on the Duke of Buckingham's Essay, octavo, 1731, p, 97, 98.
* In his prose Essay on Criticism. <p. $.>