account of Pastoral, partly critical and partly historical; in
which, when the merit of the modern is compared, Tasso and Guarini
are censured for remote thoughts and unnatural refinements, and,
upon the whole, the Italians and French are all excluded from rural
poetry, and the pipe of the pastoral muse is transmitted by lawful
inheritance from Theocritus to Virgil, from Virgil to Spenser, and
from Spenser to Philips. With this inauguration of Philips his
rival Pope was not much delighted; he therefore drew a comparison of
Philips's performance with his own, in which, with an unexampled and
unequalled artifice of irony, though he has himself always the
advantage, he gives the preference to Philips. The design of
aggrandising himself he disguised with such dexterity that, though
Addison discovered it, Steele was deceived, and was afraid of
displeasing Pope by publishing his paper. Published however it was
(Guardian, No. 40), and from that time Pope and Philips lived in a
perpetual reciprocation of malevolence. In poetical powers, of
either praise or satire, there was no proportion between the
combatants; but Philips, though he could not prevail by wit, hoped
to hurt Pope with another weapon, and charged him, as Pope thought
with Addison's approbation, as disaffected to the Government. Even
with this he was not satisfied, for, indeed, there is no appearance
that any regard was paid to his clamours. He proceeded to grosser
insults, and hung up a rod at Button's, with which he threatened to
chastise Pope, who appears to have been extremely exasperated, for
in the first edition of his Letters he calls Philips "rascal," and
in the last still charges him with detaining in his hands the
subscriptions for "Homer" delivered to him by the Hanover Club. I
suppose it was never suspected that he meant to appropriate the
money; he only delayed, and with sufficient meanness, the
gratification of him by whose prosperity he was pained.