ed him slightly; and our bard was not famous for patience under such offences. He therefore retorts in this Dedication, maliciously upbraids Rymer with the fate of his fallen tragedy "Edgar;" and artfully divides the comparison between the Grecian and British dramatists, from that which Perault had instituted between the ancient poets in general and those of modern France. Our author's good taste, as well as policy, led him to take a distinction so necessary for the maintenance of his cause. Having bestowed what he thought an adequate chastisement upon Rymer, he employs the small remainder of the preface in discussing a few miscellaneous points of criticism, chiefly relating to translation. The tone of this Dedication excited, as Dryden himself informs us, the resentment of the court, who employed Rymer to attack our author's dramatic reputation; a task which he never accomplished. * * See his letter to Tonson, in which he thus expresses himself: "About a fortnight ago, I had an intimation from a friend, by letter, that one of the secretaries, I suppose Trenchard, had informed the queen, that I had abused her government, (these were his words,) in my epistle to Lord Radcliffe ; and that thereupon she had commanded her historiographer to fall upon my plays, which he assures me he is now doing. I doubt not his malice, from a former hint you gave ine; and if he be employed, I am confident 'tis of his own seeking, who, you know, has spoken slightly of me in his last critique, and that gave me occasion to snarl again." DEDICATION OF THE THIRD MISCELLANY, 1693, CONTAINING TRANSLATIONS FROM OVID'S METAMORPHOSES. ΤΟ THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD RADCLIFFE. † MY LORD, THESE Miscellany Poems are by many titles yours. The first they claim, from your acceptance of my promise to present them to you, before some of them were yet in being. The rest are derived from your own merit, the exactness of your judgment in poetry, and the candour of your nature; easy to forgive some trivial faults, when they come accompanied with countervailing beauties. But, after all, † Lord Radcliffe was the eldest son of Francis, Earl of Derwentwater, by Catherine, daughter of Sir William Fenwick. He married Mary Tudor, a natural daughter of Charles II., by Mary Davies, an actress, who had the fortune to attract his majesty's attention, by singing in D'Avenant's “ Rivals," the famous mad song, My lodging is on the cold ground. Lord Radcliffe succeeded to his father in 1696-7, and died 29th April, 1705. though these are your equitable claims to a dedication from other poets, yet I must acknowledge a bribe in the case, which is your particular liking of my verses. It is a vanity common to all writers, to overvalue their own productions; and it is better for me to own this failing in myself, than the world to do it for me. For what other reason have I spent my life in so unprofitable a study? why am I grown old, in seeking so barren a reward as fame? The same parts and application, which have made me a poet, might have raised me to any honours of the gown, which are often given to men of as little learning and less honesty than myself. No government has ever been, or ever can be, wherein timeservers and blockheads will not be uppermost. The persons are only changed, but the same jugglings in state, the same hypocrisy in religion, the same self-interest and mismanagement, will remain for ever. Blood and money will be lavished in all ages, only for the preferment of new faces, with old consciences. There is too often a jaundice in the eyes of great men; they see not those whom they raise in the same colours with other men. All whom they affect look golden to them, when the gilding is only in their own distempered sight. These considerations have given me a kind of contempt for those who have risen by unworthy ways. I am not ashamed to be little, when I see them so infamously great; neither do I know why the name of poet should be dishonourable to me, if I am truly one, as I hope I am; for I will never do any thing that shall dishonour it. The notions of morality are known to all men; none can pretend ignorance of those ideas which are in-born in mankind; and if I see one thing, and practise the contrary, I must be disingenuous not to acknowledge a clear truth, and base to act against the light of my own conscience. For the reputation of my honesty, no man can question it, who has any of his own; for that of my poetry, it shall either stand by its own merit, or fall for want of it. Ill writers are usually the sharpest censors; for they, as the best poet and the best patron said, When in the full perfection of decay, Turn vinegar, and come again in play." Thus the corruption of a poet is the generation of a critic; I mean of a critic in the general acceptation of this age; for formerly they were quite ano❤ ther species of men. They were defenders of poets, and commentators on their works;-to illustrate obscure beauties; to place some passages in a better light; to redeem others from malicious interpretations; to help out an author's modesty, who is not ostentatious of his wit; and, in short, to shield him from the ill-nature of those fellows, who were then called Zoili and Momi, and now take upon themselves the venerable name of censors. But neither Zoilus, nor he who endeavoured to defame Virgil, were ever adopted into the name of critics by the ancients. What their reputation was then, we know; and their successors in this age deserve no better. Are our auxiliary forces turned our enemies? are they, who at best are but wits of the second order, and whose only credit amongst readers is what they obtained by being subservient to the fame of writers, are these become rebels, of slaves, and usurpers, of subjects? or, to speak in the most honourable terms * These lines are quoted from Lord Dorset's address "to Mr Edward Howard, on his incomparable, incomprehensible poem, called, The British Princes:" Wit, like tierce claret, when it 'gins to pall, of them, are they, from our seconds, become principals against us? Does the ivy undermine the oak, which supports its weakness? What labour would it cost them to put in a better line, than the worst of those which they expunge in a true poet? Petronius, the greatest wit perhaps of all the Romans, yet when his envy prevailed upon his judgment to fall on Lucan, he fell himself in his attempt; he performed worse in his "Essay of the Civil War" than the author of the "Pharsalia ;" and, avoiding his errors, has made greater of his own. Julius Scaliger would needs turn down Homer, and abdicate him after the possession of three thousand years: has he succeeded in his attempt? he has indeed shown us some of those imperfections in him, which are incident to human kind; but who had not rather be that Homer than this Scaliger? You see the same hypercritic, when he endeavours to mend the beginning of Claudian, (a faulty poet, and living in a barbarous age,) yet how short he comes of him, and substitutes such verses of his own as deserve the ferula. What a censure has he made of Lucan, that "he rather seems to bark than sing?" Would any but a dog have made so snarling a comparison? one would have thought he had learned Latin as late as they tell us he did Greek. Yet he came off, with a pace tuâ,-by your good leave, Lucan; he called him not by those outrageous names, of fool, booby, and blockhead: he had somewhat more of good manners than his successors, as he had much more knowledge. We have two sorts of those gentlemen in our nation; some of them, proceeding with a seeming moderation and pretence of respect to the dramatic writers of the last age, only scorn and vilify the present poets, to set up their predecessors. But this is only in appearance; for their real design is nothing less than to do honour to any |