Boileau.—I have been often solicited to admire his writings by his learned friend, Dr. Spratt. He seems to me a great wit, and a very amiable man, but not a good poet.
Pope.—The spirit of poetry is strong in some of his odes, but in the art of poetry he is always extremely deficient.
Boileau.—I hear that of late his reputation is much lowered in the opinion of the English. Yet I cannot but think that, if a moderate portion of the superfluities of his wit were given by Apollo to some of their modern bards, who write commonplace morals in very smooth verse, without any absurdity, but without a single new thought, or one enlivening spark of imagination, it would be a great favour to them, and do them more service than all the rules laid down in my “Art of Poetry” and yours of “Criticism.”
Pope.—I am much of your mind. But I left in England some poets whom you, I know, will admire, not only for the harmony and correctness of style, but the spirit and genius you will find in their writings.
Boileau.—France, too, has produced some very excellent writers since the time of my death. Of one particularly I hear wonders. Fame to him is as kind as if he had been dead a thousand years. She brings his praises to me from all parts of Europe. You know I speak of Voltaire.
Pope.—I do; the English nation yields to none in admiration of his extensive genius. Other writers excel in some one particular branch of wit or science; but when the King of Prussia drew Voltaire from Paris to Berlin, he had a whole academy of belles lettres in him alone.
Boileau.—That prince himself has such talents for poetry as no other monarch in any age or country has ever possessed. What an astonishing compass must there be in his mind, what an heroic tranquillity and firmness in his heart, that he can, in the evening, compose an ode or epistle in the most elegant verse, and the next morning fight a battle with the conduct of Cæsar or Gustavus Adolphus!
Pope.—I envy Voltaire so noble a subject both for his verse and his prose. But if that prince will write his own commentaries, he will want no historian. I hope that, in writing them, he will not restrain his pen, as Cæsar has done, to a mere account of his wars, but let us see the politician, and the benignant protector of arts and sciences, as well as the warrior, in that picture of himself. Voltaire has shown us that the events of battles and sieges are not the most interesting parts of good history, but that all the improvements and embellishments of human society ought to be carefully and particularly recorded there.
Boileau.—The progress of arts and knowledge, and the great changes that have happened in the manners of mankind, are objects far more worthy of a leader’s attention
than the revolutions of fortune. And it is chiefly to Voltaire that we owe this instructive species of history.