produce may very justly be desired, yet, to make poetry exact, there ought to be some stated mode of admitting them.

But, till some such regulation can be formed, I wish them still to be retained in their present state. They are sometimes convenient to the poet. Fenton was of opinion, that Dryden was too liberal, and Pope too sparing in their use.

The rhymes of Dryden are commonly just, and he valued himself for his readiness in finding them; but he is sometimes open to objection.

It is the common practice of our poets to end the second line with a weak or grave syllable:

Together o'er the Alps methinks we fly,

Fill'd with ideas of fair Italy.

Dryden sometimes puts the weak rhyme in the first:

Laugh, all the powers that favour tyranny,

And all the standing army of the sky.

Sometimes he concludes a period or paragraph with the first line of a couplet, which, though the French seem to do it without irregularity, always displeases in English poetry.

The Alexandrine, though much his favourite, is not always very diligently fabricated by him. It invariably requires a break at the sixth syllable; a rule which the modern French poets never violate, but which Dryden sometimes neglected :

And with paternal thunder vindicates his throne.

Of Dryden's works it was said by Pope, that "he could select from them better specimens of every mode of poetry than any other English writer could supply." Perhaps no nation ever produced a writer that enriched his language with such a variety of models. To him we owe the improvement, perhaps the completion of our metre, the refinement of our language, and much of the correctness of our sentiments. By him we were taught, sapere et fari, to think naturally and express forcibly. Though Davies has reasoned in rhyme before him, it may be perhaps maintained, that he was the first who joined argument with poetry. He showed us the true bounds of a translator's liberty. What was said of Rome, adorned by Augustus, may be applied by an easy metaphor to English poetry, embellished by Dryden: lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit. He found it brick, and he left it marble.

The invocation before the Georgics is here inserted from Mr. Milbourne's version, that, according to his own proposal, his verses may be compared with those which he

censures.

What makes the richest tilth, beneath what signs
To plough, and when to match your elms and vines,
What care with flocks, and what with herds agrees,
And all the management of frugal bees,

I sing, Mæcenas! Ye immensely clear,

Vast orbs of light, which guide the rolling year!
Bacchus, and mother Ceres, if by you

We fatt'ning corn for hungry mast pursue,
If, taught by you, we first the cluster prest,

And thin cold streams with sprightly juice refresht;

Ye fawns, the present numens of the field,
Wood-nymphs and fawns, your kind assistance yield;

Your gifts I sing: and thou, at whose fear'd stroke
From rending earth the fiery courser broke,

Great Neptune, O assist my artful song!

And thou to whom the woods and groves belong,
Whose snowy heifers on her flow'ry plains
In mighty herds the Cæan Isle maintains!
Pan, happy shepherd, if thy cares divine,
Eer to improve thy Mænalus incline,
Leave thy Lycaan wood and native grove,
And with thy lucky smiles our work approve;
Be Pallas too, sweet oil's inventor, kind;
And he who first the crooked plough design'd,
Sylvanus, god of all the woods, appear,
Whose hands a new-drawn tender cypress bear!
Ye gods and goddesses, who e'er with love
Would guard our pastures, and our fields improve;
Ye, who new plants from unknown lands supply,
And with condensing clouds obscure the sky,
And drop them softly thence in fruitful showers;
Assist my enterprise, ye gentle powers!

And thou, great Cæsar! though we know not yet
Among what gods thou 'It fix thy lofty seat;
Whether thou 'It be the kind tutelar god

Of thy own Rome, or with thy awful nod

Guide the vast world, while thy great hand shall bear
The fruits and seasons of the turning year,

And thy bright brows thy mother's myrtles wear;
Whether thou 'It all the boundless ocean sway,

And seamen only to thyself shall pray;

Thule, the fairest island, kneel to thee,

And, that thou may'st her son by marriage be,
Tethys will for the happy purchase yield
To make a dowry of her wat'ry field:
Whether thou 'It add to Heaven a brighter sign,
And o'er the summer months serenely shine;
Where between Cancer and Erigone,
There yet remains a spacious room for thee;
Where the hot Scorpion too his arm declines,
And more to thee than half his arch resigns;
Whate'er thou 'lt be; for sure the realms below
No just pretence to thy command can show:
No such ambition sways thy vast desires,
Though Greece her own Elysian Fields admires.
And now, at last, contented Proserpine
Can all her mother's earnest prayers decline.
Whate'er thou 'lt be, O guide our gentle course,
And with thy smiles our bold attempts enforce;
With me th' unknowing rustics' wants relieve,
And, though on Earth, our sacred vows receive,

Mr. DRYDEN, having received from Rymer his Remarks on the Tragedies of the last Age, wrote observations on the blank leaves; which, having been in the possession of Mr. Garrick, are by his favour communicated to the public, that no particle of Dryden may be lost.

"That we may less wonder why pity and terrour are not now the only springs on which our tragedies move, and that Shakspeare may be more excused, Rapin confesses that the French tragedies now all run on the tendre; and gives the reason, because

ence.

love is the passion which most predominates in our souls, and that therefore the passions represented become insipid, unless they are conformable to the thoughts of the audiBut it is to be concluded, that this passion works not now amongst the French so strongly as the other two did amongst the ancients. Amongst us, who have a stronger genius for writing, the operations from the writing are much stronger: for the raising of Shakspeare's passions is more from the excellency of the words and thoughts, than the justness of the occasion; and, if he has been able to pick single occasions, he has never founded the whole reasonably: yet, by the genius of poetry in writing, he has succeeded.

Rapin attributes more to the dictio, that is, to the words and discourse of a tragedy, than Aristotle has done, who places them in the last rank of beauties; perhaps, only last in order, because they are the last product of the design, of the disposition or connection of its parts; of the characters, of the manners of those characters, and of the thoughts proceeding from those manners. Rapin's words are remarkable: "Tis not the admirable intrigue, the surprising events, and extraordinary incidents, that make the beauty of a tragedy: 'tis the discourses, when they are natural and passionate: so are Shakspeare's.'

"The parts of a poem, tragic or heroic, are,

"1. The fable itself.

"2. The order or manner of its contrivance, in relation of the parts to the whole. "3. The manners, or decency of the characters, in speaking or acting what is proper for them, and proper to be shown by the poet.

"4. The thoughts which express the manners. "5. The words which express those thoughts.

"In the last of these Homer excels Virgil; Virgil all the other ancient poets; and Shakspeare all modern poets.

"For the second of these, the order: the meaning is, that a fable ought to have a beginning, middle, and an end, all just and natural; so that that part, e. g. which is the middle, could not naturally be the beginning or end, and so of the rest: all de pend on one another, like the links of a curious chain. If terrour and pity are only to be raised, certainly this author follows Aristotle's rules, and Sophocles' and Euripides' example; but joy may be raised too, and that doubly, either by seeing a wicked man punished, or a good man at last fortunate; or perhaps indignation, to see wickedness prosperous, and goodness depressed: both these may be profitable to the end of a tragedy, reformation of manners; but the last improperly, only as it begets pity in the audience; though Aristotle, I confess, places tragedies of this kind in the second form. "He who undertakes to answer this excellent critique of Mr. Rymer, in behalf of our English poets against the Greek, ought to do it in this manner: either by yielding to him the greatest part of what he contends for, which consists in this, that the pufos i. e. the design and conduct of it, is more conducing in the Greeks to those ends of tragedy, which Aristotle and he propose, namely, to cause terrour and pity; yet the granting this does not set the Greeks above the English poets.

"But the answerer ought to prove two things: first, that the fable is not the greatest masterpiece of a tragedy, though it be the foundation of it.

"Secondly, that other ends as suitable to the nature of tragedy may be found in the English, which were not in the Greek.

"Aristotle places the fable first; not quoad dignitatem, sed quoad fundamentum:

for a fable, never so movingly contrived to those ends of his, pity and terrour, will operate nothing on our affections, except the characters, manners, thoughts, and words, are suitable.

"So that it remains for Mr. Rymer to prove, that in all those, or the greatest parts of them, we are inferior to Sophocles and Euripides; and this he has offered at, in some measure; but, I think, a little partially to the ancients.

"For the fable itself, 'tis in the English more adorned with episodes, and larger than in the Greek poets; consequently more diverting. For, if the action be but one, and that plain, without any counterturn of design or episode, i. e. underplot, how can it be so pleasing as the English, which have both underplot and a turned design, which keeps the audience in expectation of the catastrophe? whereas in the Greek poets we see through the whole design at first.

"For the characters, they are neither so many nor so various in Sophocles and Euripides, as in Shakspeare and Fletcher; only they are more adapted to those ends of tragedy which Aristotle commends to us, pity and terrour.

"The manners flow from the characters, and consequently must partake of their advantages and disadvantages.

"The thoughts and words, which are the fourth and fifth beauties of tragedy, are certainly more noble and more poetical in the English than in the Greek, which must be proved by comparing them somewhat more equitably than Mr. Rymer has done.

“After all, we need not yield that the English way is less conducing to move pity and terrour, because they often show virtue oppressed and vice punished; where they do not both, or either, they are not to be defended.

"And if we should grant that the Greeks performed this better, perhaps it may admit of dispute, whether pity and terrour are either the prime, or at least the only ends of tragedy.

""Tis not enough that Aristotle had said so; for Aristotle drew his models of tragedy from Sophocles and Euripides; and if he had seen ours, might have changed his mind. And chiefly we have to say, (what I hinted on pity and terrour, in the last paragraph save one) that the punishment of vice and reward of virtue are the most adequate ends of tragedy, because most conducing to good example of life. Now pity is not so easily raised for a criminal (and the ancient tragedy always represents his chief person such) as it is for an innocent man; and the suffering of innocence and punishment of the offender is of the nature of English tragedy: contrarily, in the Greek, innocence is unhappy often, and the offender escapes. Then we are not touched with the sufferings of any sort of men so much as of lovers; and this was almost unknown to the ancients: so that they neither administered poetical justice, of which Mr. Rymer boasts, so well as we; neither knew they the best common-place of pity, which is love.

"He therefore unjustly blames us for not building on what the ancients left us; for it seems, upon consideration of the premises, that we have wholly finished what they began.

"My judgment on this piece is this: that it is extremely learned, but that the author of it is better read in the Greek than in the English poets; that all writers ought to study this critique, as the best account I have ever seen of the ancients; that the model of tragedy he has here given is excellent, and extremely correct; but that it is not the only model of all tragedy, because it is too much circumscribed in plot, characters, &c. and, lastly, that we may be taught here justly to admire and imitate the ancients, without giving them the preference with this author, in prejudice to our own country.

"Want of method in this excellent treatise makes the thoughts of the author some. times obscure.

"His meaning, that pity and terrour are to be moved, is, that they are to be moved as the means conducing to the ends of tragedy, which are pleasure and instruction.

"And these two ends may be thus distinguished. The chief end of the poet is to please; for his immediate reputation depends on it.

"The great end of the poem is to instruct, which is performed by making pleasure the vehicle of that instruction; for, poesy is an art, and all arts are made to profit. Rapin. "The pity, which the poet is to labour for, is for the criminal, not for those or him whom he has murdered, or who have been the occasion of the tragedy. The terrour is likewise in the punishment of the same criminal; who, if he be represented too great an offender, will not be pitied; if altogether innocent, his punishment will be unjust.

"Another obscurity is, where he says, Sophocles perfected tragedy by introducing the third actor; that is, he meant three kinds of action; one company singing, or speaking; another playing on the music; a third dancing.

"To make a true judgment in this competition between the Greek poets and the English, in tragedy:

“Consider, first, how Aristotle has defined a tragedy. Secondly, what he assigns the end of it to be. Thirdly, what he thinks the beauties of it. Fourthly, the means to attain the end proposed.

"Compare the Greek and English tragic poets justly, and without partiality, according to those rules.

Then, secondly, consider whether Aristotle has made a just definition of tragedy; of its parts, of its ends, and of its beauties; and whether he, having not seen any others but those of Sophocles, Euripides, &c. had or truly could determine what all the excellencies of tragedy are, and wherein they consist.

"Next, show in what ancient tragedy was deficient: for example, in the narrowness of its plots, and fewness of persons; and try whether that be not a fault in the Greek poets; and whether their excellency was so great, when the variety was visibly so littie; or whether what they did was not very easy to do.

"Then make a judgment on what the English have added to their beauties: as, for example, not only more plot, but also new passions; as, namely, that of love, scarcely touched on by the ancients, except in this one example of Phædra, cited by Mr. Rymer; and in that how short they were of Fletcher!

"Prove also, that love, being an heroic passion, is fit for tragedy, which cannot be denied, because of the example alleged of Phædra; and how far Shakspeare has outdone them in friendship, &c.

"To return to the beginning of this inquiry; consider if pity and terrour be enough for tragedy to move; and I believe, upon a true definition of tragedy, it will be found, that its work extends further, and that it is to reform manners, by a delightful representation of human life in great persons, by way of dialogue. If this be true, then not only pity and terrour are to be moved, as the only means to bring us to virtue, but generally love to virtue, and hatred to vice; by showing the rewards of one, and punishments of the other; at least, by rendering virtue always amiable, though it be shown unfortunate; and vice detestable, though it be shown triumphant.

"If, then, the encouragement of virtue and discouragement of vice be the proper ends of poetry in tragedy, pity and terrour, though good means, are not the only. For all the passions, in their turns, are to be set in a ferment; as joy, anger, love, fear,