sometimes above common apprehension; his notions politick and grave, and tending to the instruction of princes, and reformation of states; that they are abundantly interlaced with variety of fancies, tropes, and figures, which the criticks have enviously branded with the name of obscurity and false grammar.

Well, he is now fettered in business of more unpleasant nature: the Muses have lost him, but the commonwealth gains by it; the corruption of a poet is the generation of a statesman.

He will not venture again into the civil wars of censure; ubi ---- nullos habitura triumphos. If he had not told us he had left the Muses, we might have half suspected it by that word, ubi, which does not any way belong to them in that place; the rest of the verse is indeed Lucan's; but that ubi, I will answer for it, is his own. Yet he has another reason for this disgust of Poesy; for he says immediately after, that the manner of plays which are now in most esteem, is beyond his power to perform: to perform the manner of a thing, I confess is new English to me. However, he condemns not the satisfaction of others; but rather their unnecessary understanding, who, like Sancho Pança's doctor, prescribe too strictly to our appetites; for, says he, in the difference of tragedy and comedy, and of farce itself, there can be no determination but by the taste, nor in the manner of their composure.

We shall see him now as great a critick as he was a poet; and the reason why he excelled so much in poetry will be evident, for it will appear

to have proceeded from the exactness of his judgment. In the difference of tragedy, comedy, and farce itself, there can be no determination but by the taste. I will not quarrel with the obscurity of his phrase, though I justly might; but beg his pardon if I do not rightly understand him. If he means, that there is no essential difference betwixt comedy, tragedy, and farce, but what is only made by the people's taste, which distinguishes one of them from the other, that is so manifest an errour, that I need not lose time to contradict it. Were there neither judge, taste, nor opinion in the world, yet they would differ in their natures; for the action, character, and language of tragedy, would still be great and high; that of comedy lower and more familiar. Admiration would be the delight of one, and satire of the other.

I have but briefly touched upon these things, because, whatever his words are, I can scarce imagine, that he who is always concerned for the true honour of reason, and would have no spurious issue fathered upon her, should mean any thing so absurd as to affirm that there is no difference betwixt comedy and tragedy, but what is made by the taste only unless he would have us understand the comedies of my lord L.", where the first act should be pottages, the second fricassees, &c. and the fifth a chere entiere of women.

6 I suppose, lord Lauderdale. He was not created a duke till 1672.

I rather guess he means, that betwixt one comedy or tragedy and another, there is no other difference but what is made by the liking or disliking of the audience. This is indeed a less errour than the former, but yet it is a great one. The liking or disliking of the people gives the play the denomination of good or bad; but does not really make or constitute it such. To please the people ought to be the poet's aim, because plays are made for their delight; but it does not follow that they are always pleased with good plays, or that the plays which please them are always good. The humour of the people is now for comedy; therefore, in hope to please them, I write comedies rather than serious plays; and so far their taste prescribes to me: but it does not follow from that reason, that comedy is to be preferred before tragedy in its own nature; for that which is so in its own nature, cannot be otherwise; as a man cannot but be a rational creature but the opinion of the people may alter, and in another age, or perhaps in this, serious plays may be set up above comedies.

This I think a sufficient answer: if it be not, he has provided me of an excuse. It seems, in his wisdom, he foresaw my weakness, and has found out this expedient for me;-that it is not necessary for poets to study strict reason; since they are so used to a greater latitude than is allowed by that severe inquisition, that they must infringe their

own jurisdiction, to profess themselves obliged to argue well.

I am obliged to him for discovering to me this back-door; but I am not yet resolved on my retreat for I am of opinion that they cannot be good poets, who are not accustomed to argue well. False reasonings and colours of speech are the certain marks of one who does not understand the stage; for moral truth is the mistress of the poet, as much as of the philosopher. Poesy must resemble natural truth, but it must be ethical. Indeed the poet dresses truth, and adorns nature, but does not alter them :

Ficta voluptatis causâ sint proxima veris.

This

Therefore, that is not the best poesy, which resembles notions of things that are not, to things that are though the fancy may be great, and the words flowing, yet the soul is but half satisfied when there is not truth in the foundation. is that which makes Virgil be preferred before the rest of poets. In variety of fancy and sweetness of expression, you see Ovid far above him; for Virgil rejected many of those things which Ovid wrote. A great wit's great work is to refuse, as my worthy friend, Sir John Berkenhead, has ingeniously expressed it. You rarely meet with any thing in Virgil but truth, which therefore leaves the strongest impression of pleasure in the soul. This I thought myself obliged to say in behalf of Poesy; and to

declare, though it be against myself, that when poets do not argue well, the defect is in the workmen, not in the art.

And now I come to the boldest part of his discourse, wherein he attacks not me, but all the ancients and moderns; and undermines, as he thinks, the very foundations on which Dramatick Poesy is built. I could wish he would have declined that envy which must of necessity follow such an undertaking, and contented himself with triumphing over me in my opinions of verse, which I will never hereafter dispute with him; but he must pardon me, if I have that veneration for Aristotle, Horace, Ben Jonson, and Corneille, that I dare not serve him in such a cause, and against such heroes, but rather fight under their protection, as Homer reports of little Teucer, who shot the Trojans from under the large buckler of Ajax Telamon:

Στη δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ὑπ' Αίας σακέϊ Τελαμωνιάδαο.
He stood beneath his brother's ample shield;
And cover'd there, shot death through all the field.

The words of my noble adversary are these: But if we examine the general rules laid down for plays by strict reason, we shall find the errours equally gross; for the great foundation which is laid to build upon, is nothing, as it is generally stated, as will appear upon the examination of the particulars.

These particulars, in due time, shall be ex≫ amined. In the mean while, let us consider what