Pope and Gray, artificial in their poetry, were not less artificial in their correspondence; but while in the former department of cd'ifiposition they strove to display their art, in the latter their no less successful endeavour was to con ceal it. Together with Cowper and Walpole, they achieved the feat of imparting a literary value to ordinary topics by studious elaboration and precise nicety of expression, without at the same time sacrificing the familiar ease Without which letters become rhetorical exercises. Such an achievement demanded more leisure and less absorbing emotion than fell to the lot of the succeeding age.