other. I have been forc'd to help out other arguments; but this has been bountiful to me : they have been low and barren of praise, and I have exalted them, and made them fruitful; but here - Omnia sponte sua reddit justissima tellus. I have had a large, a fair, and a pleasant field; so fertile that without my cultivating it has given me two harvests in a summer, and in both oppress'd the reaper. All other greatness in subjects is only counterfeit; it will not endure the test of danger; the greatness of arms is only real: other greatness burdens a nation with its weight; this supports it with its strength. And as it is the happiness of the age, so it is the peculiar goodness of the best of kings, that we may praise his subjects without offending him. Doubtless it proceeds from a just confidence of his own virtue, which the luster of no other can be so great as to darken in him; for the good or the valiant are never safely prais'd under a bad or a degenerate prince.

But to return from this digression to a farther account of my poem; I must crave leave to tell you, that as I have endeavor'd to adorn it with noble thoughts, so much more to express those thoughts with elocution.The composition of all poems is, or ought to be, of wit; and wit in the poet, or wit writing (if you will give me leave to use a school-distinction) is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges thro' the field of memory, till it springs the quarry it hunted after; or, without metaphor, which searches over all the memory for the species or ideas of those things which it designs to represent. Wit written is that which is well defin'd, the happy result of thought, or product of imagination. But to proceed from wit, in the general notion of it, to the proper wit of an heroic or historical poem, I judge it chiefly to consist in the delightful imaging of persons, actions, passions, or things. 'Tis not the jerk or sting of an epigram, nor the seeming contradiction of a poor antithesis, (the delight of an ill-judging audience in a play of rhyme,) nor the jingle of a more poor paronomasia; neither is it so much the morality of a grave sentence, affected by Lucan, but more sparingly us'd by Virgil; but it is some lively and apt description, dress'd in such colors of speech that it sets before your eyes the absent object as perfectly and more delightfully than nature. So then, the first happiness of the poet's imagination is properly invention, or finding of the thought; the second is fancy, or the variation, deriving, or molding of that thought, as the judgment represents it proper to the subject; the third is elocution, or the art of clothing and adorning that thought, so found and varied, in apt, significant, and sounding words: the quick

ness of the imagination is seen in the invention, the fertility in the fancy, and the accuracy in the expression. For the two first of these, Ovid is i famous amongst the poets; for the later, Virgil. Ovid images more often the movements/ and affections of the mind, either combating between two contrary passions, or extremely discompos'd by one: his words therefore are the least part of his care; for he pictures nature in disorder, with which the study and choice of words is inconsistent. This is the proper wit of dialogue or discourse, and consequently of the drama, where all that is said is to be suppos'd the effect of sudden thought; which, tho' it excludes not the quickness of wit in repartees, yet admits not a too curious election of words, too frequent allusions, or use of tropes, or in fine anything that shews remoteness of thought or labor in the writer. On the other side, Virgil speaks not so often to us in the person of another, like Ovid, but in his own: he relates almost all things as from himself, and thereby gains more liberty than the other, to express his thoughts with all the graces of elocution, to write more figuratively, and to confess as well the labor as the force of his imagination. Tho' he describes his Dido well and naturally, in the violence of her passions. yet he must yield in that to the Myrrha, the Biblis, the Althæa, of Ovid; for, as great an admirer of him as I am, I must acknowledge, that if I see not more of their souls than I see of Dido's, at least I have a greater concernment for them: and that convinces me that Ovid has touch'd those tender strokes more delicately than Virgil could. But when action or persons are to be describ'd, when any such image is to be set before us, how bold, how masterly are the strokes of Virgil! We see the objects he represents us with in their native figures, in their proper motions; but so we see them, as our own eyes could never have beheld them so beautiful in themselves. We see the soul of the poet, like that universal one of which he speaks, informing and moving thro' all his pictures:

Totamque infusa per artus

Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet. We behold him embellishing his images, as he makes Venus breathing beauty upon her son Eneas:

- lumenque juventa
Purpureum, et lætos oculis afflarat honores:
Quale manus addunt ebori decus, aut ubi flavo
Argentum Pariusve lapis circundatur auro.

See his tempest, his funeral sports, his combat of Turnus and Eneas: and in his Georgics, which I esteem the divinest part of all his writings, the plague, the country, the battle of bulls, the labor of the bees, and those many other excellent images of nature, most of which are nei

ther great in themselves, nor have any natural ornament to bear them up: but the words wherewith he describes them are so excellent, that it might be well applied to him, which was said by Ovid, Materiam superabat opus: the very sound of his words has often somewhat that is connatural to the subject; and while we read him, we sit, as in a play, beholding the scenes of what he represents. To perform this, he made frequent use of tropes, which you know change the nature of a known word by applying it to some other signification; and this is it which Horace means in his epistle to the Pisos :

Dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum
Reddiderit junctura novum-

But I am sensible I have presum'd too far, to entertain you with a rude discourse of that art which you both know so well, and put into practice with so much happiness. Yet before I leave Virgil, I must own the vanity to tell you, and by you the world, that he has been my master in this poem: I have follow'd him everywhere, I know not with what success, but I am sure with diligence enough: my images are many of them copied from him, and the rest are imitations of him. My expressions also are as near as the idioms of the two languages would admit of in translation. And this, sir, I have done with that boldness for which I will stand accomptable to any of our little critics, who, perhaps, are not better acquainted with him than I am. Upon your first perusal of this poem, you have taken notice of some words which I have innovated (if it be too bold for me to say refin'd) upon his Latin; which, as I offer not to introduce into English prose, so I hope they are neither improper, nor altogether unelegant in verse; and, in this, Horace will again defend me:

Et nova, fictaque nuper, habebunt verba fidem, si
Græco fonte cadant, parce detorta -

The inference is exceeding plain: for if a Roman poet might have liberty to coin a word, supposing only that it was deriv'd from the Greek, was put into a Latin termination, and that he us'd this liberty but seldom, and with modesty; how much more justly may I challenge that privilege to do it with the same prerequisites, from the best and most judicious of Latin writers? In some places where either the fancy or the words were his, or any other's, I have noted it in the margin, that I might not seem a plagiary; in others I have neglected it, to avoid as well tediousness, as the affectation of doing it too often. Such descriptions or images, well wrought, which I promise not for mine, are, as I have said, the adequate delight of heroic poesy; for they beget admiration,

which is its proper object; as the images of the burlesque, which is contrary to this, by the same reason beget laughter; for the one shews nature beautified, as in the picture of a fair woman, which we all admire; the other shews her deform'd, as in that of a lazar, or of a fool with distorted face and antic gestures, at which we cannot forbear to laugh, because it is a deviation from nature. But tho' the same images serve equally for the epic poesy, and for the historic and panegyric, which are branches of it, yet a several sort of sculpture is to be us'd in them. If some of them are to be like those of Juvenal, Stantes in curribus Æmiliani, heroes drawn in their triumphal chariots, and in their full proportion; others are to be like that of Virgil, Spirantia mollius ara: there is somewhat more of softness and tenderness to be shewn in them. You will soon find I write not this without concern. Some, who have seen a paper of verses which I wrote last year to her Highness the Duchess, have accus'd them of that only thing I could defend in them; they said, I did humi serpere, that I wanted not only height of fancy, but dignity of words to set it off. I might well answer with that of Horace, Nunc non erat his locus; I knew I address'd them to a lady, and accordingly I affected the softness of expression, and the smoothness of measure, rather than the height of thought; and in what I did endeavor, it is no vanity to say I have succeeded. I detest arrogance; but there is some difference betwixt that and a just defense. But I will not farther bribe your candor or the reader's. I leave them to speak for me; and, if they can, to make out that character, not pretending to a greater, which I have given them.

So when the newborn Phoenix first is seen, Her feather'd subjects all adore their queen; And, while she makes her progress thro' the East,

From every grove her numerous train 's increas'd:

Each poet of the air her glory sings, And round him the pleas'd audience clap their wings.

And now, sir, 't is time I should relieve you from the tedious length of this account. You have better and more profitable employment for your hours, and I wrong the public to detain you longer. In conclusion, I must leave my poem to you with all its faults, which I hope to find fewer in the printing by your emendations. I know you are not of the number of those of whom the younger Pliny speaks: Nec sunt parum multi, qui carpere amicos suos judicium vocant: I am rather too secure of you on that side. Your candor in pardoning my errors may make you more remiss in correcting them; if you will not withal consider that they come into the world with your approbation, and thro' your hands. I beg from you the greatest favor you can confer upon an absent person, since I repose upon your management what is dearest to me, my fame and reputation; and therefore I hope it will stir you up to make my poem fairer by many of your blots; if not, you know the story of the gamester who married the rich man's daughter, and when her father denied the portion, christen'd all the children by his surname, that if, in conclusion, they must beg, they should do so by one name, as well as by the other. But since the reproach of my faults will light on you, 't is but reason I should do you that justice to the readers, to let them know, that if there be anything tolerable in this poem, they owe the argument to your