TO THE REV. HENRY GOLDSMITH.. DEAR SIR, IAM fenfible that the friendship between usə can acquire no new force from the ceremonies of a Dedication; and, perhaps, it demands an exeufe, thus to prefix your name to my attempts,, which you decline giving with your own. But as a part of this poem was formerly written to you from Switzerland, the whole can now, with propriety, be only inferibed to you.. It will alfo throw a light upon many parts of it, when the reader underftands, that it is addreffed to a man, who, defpiling fame and fortune, has, retired early to happiness and obfcurity, with an income of forty pounds a year. I Now perceive, my dear brother, the wisdom of your humble choice. You have entered upon a facred office, where the harveft is great, and the labourers are but few; while you have left the field of ambition, where the labourers are many, and the harvest not worth carrying away.. But of all kinds of ambition, as things are now circumflanced, perhaps that which purfues poetical fame is the wildeft. What from the increafed refinement of the times, from the diverfity of judgments, produced by oppofing fyf-. tems * tems of criticism, and from the more prevalent diverfions of opinion influenced by party, theftrongest and happieft efforts can expect to please but in a very narrow circle. POETRY makes a principal amufement among unpolished nations; but in a country verging to the extremes of refinement, Painting and Mufick come in for a fhare. And as they offer the feeble mind a lefs laborious entertainment, they at firft rival Poetry, and at length fupplant her; they engross all favour to themselves, and though but younger fifters, feize upon the elder's birthright. YET, however this art may be neglected by the powerful, it is ftill in greater danger fromthe mistaken efforts of the learned to improve it.What criticisms have we not heard of late in favour of blank verfe and Pindarick odes, choruffes, anapefts and iambicks, alliterative care and happy negligence! Every abfurdity has now a champion to defend it; and as he is generally much in the wrong, fo he has always much to fay; for error is ever talkative.. BUT there is an enemy to this art ftill more dangerous, I mean party. Party entirely dif torts the judgment, and deftroys the tafte. A mind capable of relishing general beauty, when once infected with this difeafe, can only find pleafure in what contributes to increase the diftemper. Like the tyger that feldom defifts from purfuing man after having once preyed upon human fiefh, the reader, who has once gratified: his-appetite with calumny, makes, ever after,. the the most agreeable feaft upon murdered reputa tion. Such readers generally admire fome halfwitted thing, who wants to be thought a bold man, having loft the character of a wife one. Him they dignify with the name of poet; his lampoons are called fatires, his turbulence is faid to be force, and his phrenzy fire. WHAT reception a poem may find, which has neither abuse, party, nor blank verse to support it, I cannot tell, nor am I much folicitous to know. My aims are right. Without espousing the cause of any party, I have attempted to moderate the rage of all. 1 have endeavoured to fhow, that there may be equal happiness in other ftates, though differently governed from our own; that each ftate has a particular principle of happiness, and that this principle in each state, and in our own in particular, may be carried to a mifchievous excefs. There are few can judge, better than yourself, how far these positions are illuftrated in this poem. REMOTE, unfriended, melancholy, flow, ETERNAL bleffings crown my earliest friend, |