They are also provided with above a dozen showers of snow, which, as I am informed, are the plays of many unsuccessful poets artificially cut and shreded for that use. Mr. Rimer's Edgar is to fall in snow at the next acting of King Lear, in order to heighten, or rather to alleviate, the distress of that unfortunate prince; and to serve by way of decoration to a piece which that great critic has written against.

I do not, indeed, wonder that the actors should be such professed enemies to those among our nation who are commonly known by the name of critics, since it is a rule among these gentlemen to fall upon a play, not because it is ill written, but because it takes. Several of them lay it down as a maxim, that whatever dramatic performance has a long run, must of necessity be good for nothing; as though the first precept in poetry were not to please. Whether this rule holds good or not, I shall leave✅ to the determination of those who are better judges than myself: if it does, I am sure it tends very much to the honour of those gentlemen who have established it; few of their pieces having been disgraced by a run of three days, and most of them being so exquisitely written, that the town would never give them more than one night's hearing.

I have a great esteem for a true critic, such as Aristotle and Longinus among the Greeks, Horace and Quintilian among the Romans, Boileau and Dacier among the French. But it is our misfortune, that some who set up for professed critics among us are so stupid, that they do not know how to put ten words together with elegance or common propriety, and withal so illiterate, that they have no taste of the learned languages, and therefore criticise upon old authors only at second-hand. They judge of them by what others have written, and not by any notions they have of the authors themselves. The words unity, action, sentiment, and diction, pronounced with an air of authority, give them a

figure among unlearned readers, who are apt to believe they are very deep, because they are unintelligible. The ancient critics are full of the praises of their contemporaries; they discover beauties which escaped the observation of the vulgar, and very often find out reasons for palliating and excusing such little slips and oversights as were committed in the writings of eminent authors. On the contrary, most of the smatterers in criticism who appear among us, make it their business to vilify and depreciate every new production that gains applause, to descry imaginary blemishes, and to prove, by far-fetched arguments, that what passes for beauties in any celebrated piece, are faults and errors. In short the writings of these critics, compared with those of the ancients, are like the works of the sophists compared with those of the old philosophers.

Envy and cavil are the natural fruits of laziness and ignorance ; which was probably the reason, that in the heathen mythology, Momus is said to be the son of Nox and Somnus, of Darkness and Sleep. Idle men, who have not been at the pains to accomplish or distinguish themselves, are very apt to detract from others; as ignorant men are very subject to decry those beauties in a celebrated work which they have not eyes to discover. Many of our sons of Momus, who dignify themselves by the name of critics, are the genuine descendants of those two illustrious ancestors. They are often led into those numerous absurdities, in which they daily instruct the people, by not considering, that, First, There is sometimes a greater judgment shewn in deviating from the rules of art, than in adhering to them; and, Secondly, That there is more beauty in the works of a great genius who is ignorant of all the rules of art, than in the works of a little genius, who not only knows, but scrupulously observes them."

a Some have made so ridiculous an use of this maxim, as to conclude from it, that to be knowing in the rules of art, is the mark of a little genius. and to transgress them all, the glory of a great one.-H.

First, We may often take notice of men who are perfectly acquainted with all the rules of good writing, and notwithstanding chuse to depart from them on extraordinary occasions. I could give instances out of all the tragic writers of antiquity who have shewn their judgment in this particular, and purposely receded from an established rule of the drama, when it has made way for a much higher beauty than the observation of such a rule would have been. Those who have surveyed the noblest pieces of architecture and statuary, both ancient and modern, know very well that there are frequent deviations from art in the works of the greatest masters, which have produced a much nobler effect than a more accurate and exact way of proceeding could have done. This often arises from what the Italians call the gusto grande in these arts, which is what we call the sublime in writing.

In the next place, our critics do not seem sensible that there is more beauty in the works of a great genius who is ignorant of the rules of art, than in those of a little genius who knows and observes them. It is of these men of genius that Terence speaks, in opposition to the little artificial cavillers of his time:

Quorum æmulari exoptat negligentiam

Potiùs quàm istorum obscuram diligentiam.

'Whose negligence he would rather imitate, than
these men's obscure diligence.'

A critic may have the same consolation in the ill success of his play, as Dr. South tells us a physician has at the death of a patient, That he was killed secundem artem. Our inimitable Shakespear is a stumbling-block to the whole tribe of these rigid critics. Who would not rather read one of his plays, where there is not a single rule of the stage observed, than any production of a modern critic, where there is not one of them violated? Shakespear was indeed born with all the seeds of poetry, and

may be compared to the stone in Pyrrhus's ring, which, as Pliny tells us, had the figure of Apollo and the nine Muses in the veins of it, produced by the spontaneous hand of nature, without any help from art."

No. 598. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24.

Jamne igitur laudas, quod de sapientibus alter
Ridebat, quoties a limine moverat unum
Protuleratque pedem; flebat contrarius alter?

Juv. Sat. x. 28.

Will ye not now the pair of sages praise,
Who the same end pursu'd by several ways?
One pity'd, one condemn'd, the woeful times;
One laugh'd at follies, one lamented crimes.

DRYDEN.

MANKIND may be divided into the merry and the serious, who, both of them, make a very good figure in the species, so long as they keep their respective humours from degenerating into the neighbouring extreme; there being a natural tendency in the one to a melancholy moroseness, and in the other to a fantastic levity.

The merry part of the world are very amiable, whilst they diffuse a cheerfulness through conversation at proper seasons and on proper occasions; but, on the contrary, a great grievance to society, when they infect every discourse with insipid mirth, and turn into ridicule such subjects as are not suited to it. For though laughter is looked upon by the philosophers as the property of reason, the excess of it has been always considered as the mark of folly.

This is the prettiest and justest compliment that was ever paid to our great poet. For, though all the seeds of poetry are to be found in his works, it is only for the true critic to point them out, and tell us which they are just as what we call Lusus Naturæ owe much of their beauty, and sometimes, in a manner, their existence, to the taste and ingenuity of the virtuoso.-H.

On the other side, seriousness has its beauty whilst it is attended with cheerfulness and humanity, and does not come in unseasonably to pall the good humour of those with whom we

converse.

These two sets of men, notwithstanding they each of them shine in their respective characters, are apt to bear a natural aversion and antipathy to one another.

What is more usual, than to hear men of serious tempers, and austere morals, enlarging upon the vanities and follies of the young and gay part of the species; whilst they look with a kind of horror upon such pomps and diversions as are innocent in themselves, and only culpable when they draw the mind too much?

I could not but smile upon reading a passage in the account which Mr. Baxter gives of his own life, wherein he represents it as a great blessing, that in his youth he very narrowly escaped getting a place at court.

It must, indeed, be confessed that levity of temper takes a man off his guard, and opens a pass to his soul for any temptation that assaults it. It favours all the approaches of vice, and weakens all the resistance of virtue. For which reason a renowned statesman in Queen Elizabeth's days, after having retired from court and public business, in order to give himself up to the duties of religion; when any of his old friends used to visit him, had still this word of advice in his mouth, 'Be serious.'

An eminent Italian author of this cast of mind, speaking of the great advantage of a serious and composed temper, wishes, very gravely, that for the benefit of mankind, he had Trophonius's cave in his possession; which, says he, would contribute more to the reformation of manners than all the workhouses and bridewells in Europe.

We have a very particular description of this cave in Pausa