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pardonable in fuch 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 professes 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 last age, nor which from its tediousness, languor, and want of truth of character, is lefs fit to be copied on the ftage: and what are most parts of Corneille's boasted 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.

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

I do not suppose 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 anatomift knows what muscles constitute 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 must 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 spark 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-shew. As thefe pieces take their rife in the fchool of Criticism, they return thither again, and are as good fubjects for the students in that art, as a dead body to the profeffors in anatomy. Moft 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 fuA 4 perior

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 steps of timid Imitators through trite and common roads. Genius is of a bold enterprizing nature, ill adapted to the formal restraints of critic institutions, or indeed to lay down to itself rules of nice difcretion. If perfect and faultless compofition is ever to be expected from human faculties, it must be at some 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

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cate, nor audaciously bold, affume their higheft character, and in all their compofitions seem to respect the chastity of the public taste, which would equally disdain quaintnefs of ornament, or the rude neglect of elegance and decorum. Such periods, had Greece, had Rome! Then were produced immortal works of every kind! But, when the living manners degenerated, in vain did an Aristotle and a Quintilian endeavour to restore by doctrine, what had been inspired by fentiment, and fashioned by manners.

If the feverer muses, whose sphere is the Library and the Senate, are obliged in complaifance to this degeneracy, to trick themfelves out with meretricious and frivolous ornaments, as is too apparent from the compofitions of the Hiftorians and Orators in declining empires, can we wonder that a dramatic poet, whofe chief intereft it is to please the people, should, more than any other writer, conform himself to their humour; and appear more strongly infected

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