Though Boileau and Butler agree in the applica tion of mock-heroic irony to the follies of religionists, the characters of their satire differ as widely as come ly from farce, or as the polished eloquence of a legi timate pulpit, from the vigorous and impressive, but endless and unequal harangue of the conventicle. Butler overlays us with an accumulation of wit, and fatigues us with the learning by which he increases its ludicrous effect. Boileau, inferior in both, ac commodates them with more address to ordinary readers, and calculates more correctly, from the na• ture of the mind, the period when attention must flag, and risibility languish from excess. He also verifies the remark of Johnson, that " the learning of the French is, like their food, not the best, hut they know how to cook it." In Butler, we are surfeited with substantial, but inelegant, profusion ; while Boi. leau, by the rapidity and lightness of the repast, pre vents any decay of appetite till it is finished. Of all the British poets, Pope has been most frequently .compared with Boileau. There seems to have been a natural resemblance in their minds ; and Pope was enabled by the priority of Boileau, as Boileau by that of Horace, to transfuse into his writings more of it than might otherwise have appeared. In the works of both we find the same bias to ethical seve rity ; the same abundance of pointed and proverbial couplets , the same felicity in complimentary or re. ; the same classical correctness of design ; and the same copious mellifluence of num bers. It must be allowed, however, that Pope pos
sessed a greater variety of talents than Boileau ; for we doubt if the latter was capable of producing any thing so pathetic as the " Epistle of Eloisa," or so original as the fanciful machinery of the Sylphs; and in lyric poetry Boileau sinks farther beneath Pope, than Pope beneath Dryden. The " Rape of the Lock" and the " Lutrin" have been always consi dered by critics as poems of the same class, though the latter, perhaps from its subject, appears to shade at times into the coarser manner of the Dunciad. The follies of fashionable life admitted of a light and smiling airiness of ridicule, which would not have harmonized with the rebuke of ignorance, gluttony, and sloth. Between the two poems, however, there is an obvious likeness, from parity of conception and felicity of execution ;. from the wit which sparkles ix the parts, and the seasoning of humour which enrich es the whole.* In humour we, indeed, consider them as nearly equal ; but on comparing their wit, we ap. prehend the balance will incline to our countryman. Our limits not permitting the enlargement of these remarks, we shall close them with the literary cha racter of Boileau, which was drawn by Voltaire with his usual discrimination. Incapable peut-etre du su blime qui eleve l'anre, et du sentiment qui l'attendrit, maisfait pour eclairer ceux a qui la nature accords l'un et l'autre, laboricux, severe, precis pur, harm nieux, it devint, cnfin, le poete de la raison. (w)