Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/208

204 the object of human judgment; for it is in vain to judge where we cannot alter. If by nature is meant, what is commonly called nature by the criticks, a just representation of things really existing, and actions really performed, nature cannot be properly opposed to art; nature being, in this sense, only the best effect of art.

Of this couplet, the second line is not, what is intended, an illustration of the former. Pride, in the Great, is indeed well enough connected with knaves in state, though knaves is a word rather too ludicrous and light; but the mention of sanctifed pride will not lead the thoughts to fops in learning, but rather to some species of tyranny or oppression, something more gloomy and more formidable than foppery,

This is a high compliment, but was not first bestowed on Dorset by Pope. The next verse is extremely beautiful.

In this distich is another line of which Pope was not the author. I do not mean to Rh