The Heroes of antiquity were not more difguifed in the romances of Calprenede and Scuderi, than in the tragedies of Corneille. In fpite of the admonitions given by that admirable critic Boileau to their dramatic writers in the following lines :

Gardez donc de donner, ainfi que dans Clélie,
L'air ni l'efprit François à l'antique Italie ;

Et fous des noms Romains faiffant notre portrait,
Peindre Caton galant, & Brutus damoret.

The Horatii are reprefented no less obsequious in their address to their king, than the courtiers of the grand monarque. Thefeus is made a mere fighing fwain. Many of the greateft men of antiquity, and even the roughest Heroes amongst the Goths and Van-. dals, are exhibited in this effeminate form. The poet dignified the piece, perhaps with the name of an Hercules, but, alas! it was always Hercules fpinning, that was fhewn to the spectator. And yet the editor of Corneille's works, in terms fo grofs as are hardly pardonable

pardonable in such a master of fine raillery, frequently attacks our Shakespear for the want of delicacy and politeness in his pieces. It must be owned, that in fome places they bear the marks of the unpolished times, in which he wrote, but one cannot forbear fmiling to hear a critic, who profeffes himself an admirer of the tragedies of Corneille, object to the barbarism of Shakespear's. There never was a more barbarous mode of writing than that of the French romances in the laft age, nor which from its tediousness, languor, and want of truth of character, is lefs fit to be copied on the stage: and what are most parts of Corneille's boafted tragedies, but the romantic dialogue, its tedious foliloquy, and its extravagant fentiments in the true Gothic livery of rhyme ?

The French poets affume a fuperiority over Shakespear, on account of their more conftant adherence to Ariftotle's unities of Time and Place.

The pedant who bought at a great price
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the

the lamp of a famous Philofopher, expecting that by its affistance his lucubrations would become equally celebrated, was little more abfurd than those poets, who fuppofe their dramas must be excellent if they are regulated by Aristotle's clock. To bring within a limited time, and an affigned space, a series of conversations (and French plays are little more) is no difficult matter; for that is the eafieft part of every art perhaps (but in poetry without difpute) in which the connoiffeur can direct the artist.

I do not fuppofe the Critic imagined that a mere obedience to his laws of drama would make a good tragedy, tho' it might prevent a poet more bold than judicious, from writing a very abfurd one. A painter can define the just proportion of the human body, and the anatomist knows what mufcles conftitute the ftrength of the limbs ; but grace of motion, and exertion of ftrength, depend on the mind, which animates the form. The critic but fashions the Body of a work; the poet muft add the Soul, which gives force and direction

direction to its actions and gestures: when one of these critics has attempted to finish a work by his own rules, he has rarely been able to convey into it one fpark of divine fire; and the hero of his piece, whom he defigned for a Man, remains a cold inanimate Statue; which, moving on the wood and wire of the great masters in the mechanical part of the drama, presents to the fpectators a kind of heroic puppet-fhew. As these pieces take their rife in the school of Criticism, they return thither again, and are as good subjects for the students in that art, as a dead body to the profeffors in anatomy. Most minutely too have they been anatomised in learned academies: but works, animated by Genius, will not abide this kind of diffection.

Mr. Pope fays, that, in order to form a judgment of Shakespear's works, we are not to apply to the rules of Ariftotle, which would be like trying a man by the laws of one country, who lived under thofe of another.. Heaven-born Genius acts from fomething fuperior

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perior to Rules, and antecedent to Rules; and has a right of appeal to Nature herself.

Great indulgence is due to the errors of original writers, who, quitting the beaten track which others have travelled, make daring incurfions into unexplored regions of invention, and boldly strike into the pathless Sublime it is no wonder if they are often bewildered, fometimes benighted: yet furely it is more eligible to partake the pleasure and the hazard of their adventures, than ftill to follow the cautious fteps of timid Imitators through trite and common roads. Genius is of a bold enterprizing nature, ill adapted to the formal reftraints of critic inftitutions, or indeed to lay down to itself rules of nice discretion. If perfect and faultless compofition is ever to be expected from human faculties, it must be at fome happy period, when a noble and graceful fimplicity, the result of well regulated and fober magnanimity, reigns through the general manners. Then the mufes and the arts, neither effeminately deli

cate,