Among the preparatives by which he
disciplined his talent to the task was a deep study of the writings of
Pope; and I have no doubt that from this period may be dated the
enthusiastic admiration which he ever after cherished for this great
poet,--an admiration which at last extinguished in him, after one or
two trials, all hope of pre-eminence in the same track, and drove him
thenceforth to seek renown in fields more open to competition.
The misanthropic mood of mind into which he had fallen at this time,
from disappointed affections and thwarted hopes, made the office of
satirist but too congenial and welcome to his spirit. Yet it is
evident that this bitterness existed far more in his fancy than his
heart; and that the sort of relief he now found in making war upon the
world arose much less from the indiscriminate wounds he dealt around,
than from the new sense of power he became conscious of in dealing
them, and by which he more than recovered his former station in his
own esteem. In truth, the versatility and ease with which, as shall
presently be shown, he could, on the briefest consideration, shift
from praise to censure, and, sometimes, almost as rapidly, from
censure to praise, shows how fanciful and transient were the
impressions under which he, in many instances, pronounced his
judgments; and though it may in some degree deduct from the weight of
his eulogy, absolves him also from any great depth of malice in his
Satire.
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