Note 4 — FROM THE "ESSAY ON CRITICISM."

"It requires very little reading of the French text-books to find the maxims which Pope has strung together in this poem, but he has dressed them so neatly, and turned them out with such sparkle and point, that these truisms have acquired a weight not their own, and they circulate as proverbs among us in virtue of their pithy form rather than their truth. They exemplify his own line, 'What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.' Pope told Spence that he had gone through all the best critics, specifying Quintilian, Rapin, and Le Bossu. But whatever trouble he took in collecting what to say, his main effort is expended upon how to say it."—Pattison.