should be allowed to be free from any very gross

absurdities, yet who will dare to rank it with the Paradise Lost? Some of their most perfect tragedies abound in faults as contrary to the nature of that species of poetry, and as destructive of its end, as the fools or grave-diggers of Shakespeare. That the French may boast some excellent critics, particularly Bossu, Boileau, Fenelon, and Brumoy, cannot be denied; but that these are sufficient to form a taste upon, without having recourse to the genuine fountains of all po0 3 lite

trymen, but is perfectly true and just, and which he seems to have forgotten in some of his laté assertions:

"It must be owned, that it is more difficult for a Frenchman to succeed in epic poetry, than for any other person; but neither the constraint of rhyme, nor the dryness of our language, is the cause of this difficulty. Shall I venture to name the cause? It is, because of all polished nations, ours is the least poetic. The works in verse, which are most in vogue in France, are pieces for the Theatre. These pieces must be written in a style that approaches to that of conversation. Despreaux has treated only Didactic subjects, which require simplicity. It is well known, that exactness and elegance constitute the chief merit of his verses and those of Racine; and when Despreaux attempted a sublime ode, he was no longer Despreaux. These examples have accustomed the French to too uniform a march- -."

lite literature, I mean the Grecian writers, no one but a superficial reader can allow.

I conclude these reflections with a remarkable fact. In no polished nation, after criticism has been much studied, and the rules of writing established, has any very extraordinary work ever appeared. This has visibly been the case in Greece, in Rome, and in France, after. Aristotle, Horace, and Boileau, had written their ARTS OF POETRY. In our own country, the rules of the drama, for instance, were never more completely understood than at present: yet what UNINTERESTING, though FAULTLESS, tragedies, have we lately seen! So much better is our judgment than our execution. How to account for the fact here mentioned, adequately and justly, would be attended with all those difficulties that await discussions relative to the productions of the human mind; and to the delicate and secret causes that influence them. Whether or no, the natural 1. powers be not confined and debilitated by that

timidity and caution which is occasioned by a rigid regard to the dictates of art; or whether that philosophical, that geometrical, and systematical,

1

tical, spirit so much in vogue, which has spread itself from the sciences even into polite literature, by consulting only REASON, has not diminished and destroyed SENTIMENT, and made our poets write from and to the HEAD, rather than the ᎻᎬᎪᎡᎢ ; or whether, lastly, when just models, from which the rules have necessarily been drawn, have once appeared, succeeding writers, by vainly and ambitiously striving to surpass those just models, and to shine and surprise, do not become stiff, and forced, and affected in their thoughts and diction.

SECTION IV.

OF THE RAPE OF THE LOCK.

IF

F the Moderns have excelled the Ancients in any species of writing, it seems to be in satire, and particularly in that kind of satire which is conveyed in the form of the epopee; a pleasing vehicle of satire, seldom, if ever, used by the ancients; for we know so little of the Margites of Homer, that it cannot well be produced as an example. As the poet disappears in this way of writing, and does not deliver the intended censure in his own proper person, the satire becomes more delicate, because more oblique. Add to this, that a tale or story more strongly engages and interests the reader, than a series of precepts or reproofs, or even of characters themselves, however lively and natural. An heroi-comic poem may therefore be justly esteemed the most excellent kind of satire.

The

The invention of it is usually ascribed to Alessandro Tassoni; who, in the year 1622, publish

ed at Paris, a poem composed by him, in a few months of the year 1611, entitled LA SECCHIA RAPITA; or, The Rape of the Bucket. To avoid giving offence, it was first printed under the name of Androvini Melisoni. It was afterwards reprinted at Venice, corrected, with the name of the author, and with some illustrations of Gasparo Salviani. But the learned and curious Crescembini, in his Istoria della Volgar Poesia,* informs us, that it is doubtful whether the invention of the heroi comic poem ought to be ascribed to Tassoni, or to Francesco Bracciolini, who wrote Lo SCHERNO DE GLI DEI, which performance, though it was printed four years after LA SECCHIA, is nevertheless declared in an epistle prefixed, to have been written many years sooner. The real subject of Tassoni's poem, was the

* Lib. i. pag. 78. In Roma, per il Chracas, 1698.

E tal Poesia puo diffinirsi, e chiamarsi, immitazione d'azione seria fatto con riso. Crescembini, ibid. See Quadrio also.

In Venetia, 1627. There is prefixed, by way of preface, a facetious dialogue betwixt Thalia and Urania.