of Raffaelle; and yet Rubens had great harmony, and Rembrant understood light and shadow; but what may be an excellence in a lower class of painting, becomes a blemish in a higher; as the quick, spritely turn, which is the life and beauty of epigrammatic compositions, would but ill suit with the majesty of heroic poetry.

To conclude; I would not be thought to infer from any thing that has been said, that rules are absolutely unnecessary, but to censure scrupulosity, a servile attention to minute exactness, which is sometimes inconsistent with higher excellency, and is lost in the blaze of expanded genius.

I do not know whether you will think painting a general subject. By inserting this letter, perhaps, you will incur the censure a man would deserve, whose business being to entertain a whole room should turn his back to the company, and talk to a particular person.

I am, Sir, &c.

No. LXXVII. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1759.

EASY poetry is universally admired, but I know not whether any rule has yet been fixed, by which it may be decided when poetry can be properly called easy; Horace has told us, that it is such as every reader hopes to equal, but after long labour finds unattainable. This is a very loose description, in which only the effect is noted; the qualities which produce this effect remain to be investigated.

Easy poetry is that in which natural thoughts are expressed without violence to the language. The discriminating character of ease consists principally in the diction, for all true poetry requires that the sentiments be natural. Language suffers violence by harsh or by daring figures, by transposition, by unusual acceptations of words, and by any licence, which would be avoided by a writer of prose. Where any artifice appears in the construction of the verse, that verse is no longer easy. Any epithet which can be ejected without diminution of the sense, any curious iteration of the same word, and all unusual, though not ungrammatical structure of speech, destroy the grace of easy poetry.

The first lines of Pope's Iliad afford examples of many licences which an easy writer must decline.

Achilles wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly Goddess sing,
The wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain.

In the first couplet the language is distorted by inversions, clogged with superfluities, and clouded by a harsh metaphor; and in the second there are two words used in an uncommon sense, and two epithets

inserted only to lengthen the line; all these practices may in a long work easily be pardoned, but they always produce some degree of obscurity and rugged

ness.

Easy poetry has been so long excluded by ambition of ornament, and luxuriance of imagery, that its nature seems now to be forgotten. Affectation, however opposite to ease, is sometimes mistaken for it; and those who aspire to gentle elegance, collect female phrases and fashionable barbarisms, and imagine that stile to be easy which custom has made familiar. Such was the idea of the poet who wrote the following verses to a countess cutting paper.

Pallas grew vap'rish once and odd,

She would not do the least right thing Either for Goddess or for God,

Nor work, nor play, nor paint, nor sing.

Jove frown'd, and "Use (he cry'd) those eyes "So skilful, and those hands so taper;

"Do something exquisite and wise”She bow'd, obey'd him, and cut paper.

This vexing him who gave her birth,
Thought by all heav'n a burning shame,
What does she next, but bids on earth
Her Burlington do just the same?

Pallas, you give yourself strange airs;
But sure you'll find it hard to spoil
The sense and taste of one that bears
The name of Savile and of Boyle.

Alas! one bad example shown,

How quickly all the sex pursue! See, madam! see the arts o'erthrown Between John Overton and you.

It is the prerogative of easy poetry to be understood as long as the language lasts; but modes of speech,

which owe their prevalence only to modish folly, or to the eminence of those that use them, die away with their inventors, and their meaning, in a few years, is no longer known.

Easy poetry is commonly sought in petty compositions upon minute subjects; but ease, though it excludes pomp, will admit greatness. Many lines in Cato's Soliloquy are at once easy and sublime.

'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us;
"Tis heav'n itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.

If there's a pow'r above us,

And that there is all Nature cries aloud

Thro' all her works, he must delight in virtue,
And that which he delights in must be happy.

Nor is ease more contrary to wit than to sublimity; the celebrated stanza of Cowley, on a Lady elaborately dressed, loses nothing of its freedom by the spirit of the sentiment.

Th' adorning thee with so much ar
Is but a barb'rous skill,

'Tis like the poisoning of a dart,
Too apt before to kill.

Cowley seems to have possessed the power of writing easily beyond any other of our poets, yet his pursuit of remote thoughts led him often into harshness of expression. Waller often attempted, but seldom attained it; for he is too frequently driven into transpositions. The Poets, from the time of Dryden, have gradually advanced in embellishment, and consequently departed from simplicity and ease.

To require from any author many pieces of easy poetry, would be indeed to oppress him with too hard a task. It is less difficult to write a volume of lines swelled with epithets, brightened by figures, and

stiffened by transpositions, than to produce a few couplets graced only by naked elegance and simple. purity, which require so much care and skill, that I doubt whether any of our authors has yet been able, for twenty lines together, nicely to observe the true definition of easy poetry.

No. LXXVIII. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1759.

I HAVE passed the summer in one of those places to which a mineral spring gives the idle and luxurious an annual reason for resorting, whenever they fancy themselves offended by the heat of London. What is the true motive of this periodical assembly, I have never yet been able to discover. The greater part of the visitants neither feel diseases nor fear them. What pleasure can be expected more than the variety of the journey, I know not, for the numbers are too great for privacy, and too small for diversion. As each is known to be a spy upon the rest, they all live in continual restraint; and having but a narrow range for censure, they gratify its cravings by preying on one another.

But every condition has some advantages. In this confinement, a smaller circle affords opportunities for mere exact observation. The glass that magnifies its object contracts the sight to a point, and the mind must be fixed upon a single character to remark its minute peculiarities. The quality or habit which passes unobserved in the tumult of successive multitudes, becomes conspicuous when it is offered to the notice day after day; and perhaps I have, without any distinct notice, seen thousands like my late companions; for VOL. II. I