while there was no name above his own, was willing to enjoy fame on the easiest terms. sally approved. Swift always censured them, and wrote some lines to ridicule them. In examining their propriety, it is to be considered, that the essence of verse is regularity, and its ornament is variety. To write verse, is to dispose syllables and sounds harmonically by some known and settled rule; a rule however lax enough to substitute similitude for identity, to admit change without breach of order, and to relieve the ear without disappointing it. Thus a Latin hexameter is formed from dactyls and spondees differently combined; the English he He was no lover of labour. What he thought sufficient, he did not stop to make better; and allowed himself to leave many parts unfinished, in confidence that the good lines would overbalance the bad. What he had once written, he dismissed from his thoughts, and I believe there is no example to be found of any correction or improvement made by him after publication. The hastiness of his productions might be the effect of necessity; but his subsequent neglect could hardly have any other cause than impa-roic admits of acute or grave syllables variously tience of study. What can be said of his versification will be little more than a dilatation of the praise given it by Pope : Waller was smooth: but Dryden taught to join Some improvements had been already made in English numbers; but the full force of our language was not yet felt; the verse that was smooth was commonly feeble. If Cowley had sometimes a finished line, he had it by chance. Dryden knew how to choose the flowing and the sonorous words; to vary the pauses, and adjust the accents; to diversify the cadence, and yet preserve the smoothness of his metre. Of triplets and Alexandrines, though he did not introduce the use, he established it. The triplet has long subsisted among us. Dryden seems not to have traced it higher than to Chap man's Homer; but it is to be found in Phaer's Virgil, written in the reign of Mary; and in Hall's "Satires," published five years before the death of Elizabeth. The Alexandrine was, I believe, first used by Spenser, for the sake of closing his stanza with a fuller sound. We had a longer measure of fourteen syllables, into which the "Eneid" was translated by Phaer, and other works of the ancients by other writers; of which Chapman's "Iliad" was, I believe, the last. The two first lines of Phaer's third "Eneid" will exemplify this measure: When Asia's state was overthrown and Priam's kingdom stout, All guiltless, by the pow'r of gods above was rooted out. As these lines had their break, or cæsura, always at the eighth syllable, it was thought, in time, commodious to dívide them: and quatrains of lines alternately, consisting of eight and six syllables, make the most soft and pleasing of our lyric measures: as, Relentless Time, destroying pow'r, To work some new decay. In the Alexandrine, when its power was once felt, some poems, as Drayton's "Polyolbion," were wholly written; and sometimes the measures of twelve and fourteen syllables were interchanged with one another. Cowley was the first that inserted the Alexandrine at pleasure among the heroic lines of ten syllables, and from him Dryden professes to have adopted it.* The triplet and Alexandrine are not univer This is an error. The Alexandrine inserted among heroic lines of ten syllables is found in many of the wri ers of Queen Elizabeth's reign. It will be sufficient disposed. The Latin never deviates into seven feet, or exceeds the number of seventeen syllables; but the English Alexandrine breaks the lawful bounds, and surprises the reader with two syllables more than he expected. The effect of the triplet is the same; the ear has been accustomed to expect a new rhyme in every couplet; but is on a sudden surprised with not accommodate his voice, did he not obtain three rhymes together, to which the reader could notice of the change from the braces of the mar gins. Surely there is something unskilful in the necessity of such mechanical direction. Considering the metrical art simply as a science, and consequently excluding all casualty, we must allow that triplets and Alexandrines, inserted by caprice, are interruptions of that conthe variety which they produce may very justly stancy to which science aspires. And though be desired, yet to make poetry exact, there ought to be some stated mode of admitting them. I wish them still to be retained in their present But till some such regulation can be formed, tate. They are sometimes convenient to the poet. Fenton was of opinion, that Dryden was oo Liberal, and Pope too sparing in their use. and he valued himself for his readiness in finding The rhymes of Dryden are commonly just, them, but he is sometimes open to objection. the second line with a weak or grave syllable : It is the common practice of our poets to end Together o'er the Alps methinks we fly, i'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 of 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 syl lable; a rule which the modern French poets never violate, but which Dryden sometimes neglected: And with paternal thua ler 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 We fatt'ning corn for hungry man pursue; And thou, great Cæsar! though we know not yet The fruits and seasons of the turning year, 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 terror 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 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 audience. But 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 excellence 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 connexion 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 end, all just and natural; se that that part, e. g. which is the middle, could not naturally be the beginning or end, and so of the rest all depend on one another, like the links of a curious chain. If terror 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 excel- | ancient tragedy always represents its chief per ent 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 phos, 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 terror 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 terror, 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 part 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 terror. "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. son 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 commonplace 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 sometimes obscure. "His meaning, that pity and terror 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 distin guished. The chief end of the poet is to please; for his immediate reputation depends on it. "The great end of a 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 terror 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, Sopho"After all, we need not yield that the Eng-cles perfected tragedy by introducing the third lish way is less conducing to move pity and terror, 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 terror are either the prime, or at least the only ends of tragedy. 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 ""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 terror, in the last paragraph save one,) that the pun-rules. ishment of vice, and reward of virtue, are the "Then, Secondly, Consider whether Aristotle most adequate ends of tragedy, because most has made a just definition of tragedy, of its conducing to good example of life. Now, pity parts, of its ends, and of its beauties; and wheis not so easily raised for a criminal (and the Ither 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. 66 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 little; 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. it is not first. But, secondly, I dare appeal to those who have never seen them acted, if they have not found these two passions moved within them: and if the general voice will carry it, Mr. Rymer's prejudice will take off his single testimony. "This, being matter of fact, is reasonably to be established by this appeal; as, if one man says it is night, when the rest of the world conclude it to be day, there needs no farther argument against him that it is so. "If he urge that the general taste is depraved, his arguments to prove this an at best but evince that our poets took not the best way to raise those passions: but experience proves against him, that those means, which they have used, have been successful, and have produced them. "And one reason of that success is, in my opinion, this; that Shakspeare and Fletcher have written to the genius of the age and nation in which they lived; for though nature, as he objects, is the same in all places, and reason too the same; yet the climate, the age, the disposition of the people, to whom a poet writes, may be so different, that what pleased the Greeks would not satisfy an English audience. "To return to the beginning of this inquiry; consider if pity and terror be enough for tragedy to move; and I believe, upon a true definition of tragedy, it will be found that its work extends farther, and that it is to reform manners, by a delightful representation of human life in great "And if they proceed upon a foundation of persons, by way of dialogue. If this be true, truer reason to please the Athenians than Shakthen not only pity and terror are to be moved, as speare and Fletcher to please the English, it the only means to bring us to virtue, but gene-only shows that the Athenians were a more rally 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 terror, 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, are to be used as the poet's commonplaces; and a general concernment for the principal actors is to be raised, by making them appear such in their characters, their words, and actions, as will interest the audience in their fortunes. "And if, after all, in a larger sense, pity comprehends this concernment for the good, and terror includes detestation for the bad, then let us consider whether the English have not answered this end of tragedy as well as the ancients, or perhaps better. And here Mr. Rymer's objections against these plays are to be impartially weighed, that we may see whether they are of weight enough to turn the balance against our countrymen. "It is evident those plays, which he arraigns, have moved both those passions in a high degree upon the stage. "To give the glory of this away from the poet, and to place it upon the actors, seems unjust. "One reason is, because whatever actors they have found, the event has been the same; that is, the same passions have been always moved; which shows that there is something of force and merit in the plays themselves, conducing to the design of raising these two passions; and suppose them ever to have been excellently acted, yet action only adds grace, vigour, and more life, upon the stage; but cannot give it wnolly where judicious people; but the poet's business is certainly to please the audience. "Whether our English audience have been pleased hitherto with acorns, as he calls it, or with bread, is the next question; that is, whether the means which Shakspeare and Fletcher have used, in their plays, to raise those passions beforenamed, be better applied to the ends by the Greek poets than by them And perhaps we shall not grant him this wholly: let it be yielded that a writer is not to run down with the stream, or to please the people by their usual methods, but rather to reform their judg ments, it still remains to prove that our theatre needs this total reformation. "The faults which he has found in their design, are rather wittily aggravated in many places than reasonably urged; and as much may be returned on the Greeks by one who was as witty as himself. "They destroy not, if they are granted, the foundation of the fabric; only take away from the beauty of the symmetry: for example, the faults in the character of the King, in King and No-king,' are not, as he calls them, such as render him detestable, but only imperfections which accompany human nature, and are for the most part excused by the violence of his love; so that they destroy not our pity or concernment for him: this answer may be applied to most of his objections of that kind. "And Rolla committing many murders, when he is answerable but for one, is too severely arraigned by him; for, it adds to our horror and detestation of the criminal; and poetic justice is not neglected neither; for we stab him in our minds for every offence which he commits, and the point which the poet is to gain on the audience, is not so much in the death of an offender as the raising a horror of his crimes. "That the criminal should neither be wholly guilty, nor wholly innocent, but so participating of both as to move both pity and terror, is certainly a good rule, but not perpetually to be observed; for that were to make all tragedies too much alike; which objection he foresaw, but has not fully answered. "To conclude, therefore; if the plays of the ancients are more correctly plotted, ours are more beautifully written. And, if we can raise passions as high on worse foundations, it shows our genius in tragedy is greater; for in all other parts of it the English have manifestly excelled them." "Sept. the 3d, our style. "Dear Sons, "Being now at Sir William Bowyer's in the country, I cannot write at large, because I find myself somewhat indisposed with a cold, and am thick of hearing, rather worse than I was in town. I am glad to find, by your letter of July 26th, your style, that you are both in health, but wonder you should think me so negligent as to forget to give you an account of the ship in which your parcel is to come. I have written to you two or three letters concerning it, which I have sent by safe hands, as I told you, and doubt not but you have them before this can arrive to you. Being out of town, I have forgotten the ship's name, which your mother will inquire, and put it into her letter, which is joined with mine. But the master's name I remember: he is called Mr. Ralph Thorp; the ship is bound to Leghorn, consigned to Mr. Peter and Mr. Thomas Ball, merchants. I am of your opinion, that by Tonson's means almost all our letters have miscarried for this last year. But, however, he has missed of his design in the dedication, though he had prepared the book for it; for, in every figure of Eneas he has caused him to be drawn like King William, with a hooked nose. After my return to town, I intend to alter a play of Sir Robert Howard's, written long since, and lately put into my hands; it is called "The Conquest of China by the Tartars." It will cost me six weeks' study, with the probable benefit of a hundred pounds. In the mean time I am writing a song for St. Cecilia's Feast, who, you know, is the patroness of music. This is troublesome, and no way beneficial; but I could not deny the stewards of the feast, who came in a body to me to desire that kindness, one of them being Mr. Bridgeman, whose parents are your mother's friends. I hope to send you thirty guineas between Michaelmas and Christmas, of which I will give you an account when I come to town. I remember the counsel you give me in your letter; but dissembling, though lawful in some cases, is not my talent; yet, for your sake, 1 will struggle with the plain openness of my nature, and keep in my just resentments against that degenerate order. In the mean time, I flatter not myself with any manner of hopes, but do my duty, and suffer for God's sake; being assured, before hand, never to be rewarded, though the times should alter. Towards the latter end of this month, September, Charles will begin to recover his perfect health, according to his nativity, which, casting it myself, I am sure is true, and all things hitherto have happened accordingly to the very time that I predicted them: hope at the same time to recover more health, according to my age. Remember me to poor Harry, whose prayers I earnestly desire. My Virgil succeeds in the world beyond its desert or my expectation. You know the profits might have been more; but neither my conscience nor my honour would suffer me to take them; but I can never repent of my constancy, since I am thoroughly persuaded of the justice of the cause for which 1 suffer. It has pleased God to raise up many friends to me among my enemies, though they who ought to have been my friends are negli gent of me. I am called to dinner, and cannot go on with this letter, which I desire you to excuse; and am "Your most affectionate father, "JOHN DRYDEN." SMITH. EDMUND SMITH is one of those lucky writers, lectual excellence seldom employed to any virwho have, without much labour, attained high reputation, and who are mentioned with reverence rather for the possession than the exertion of uncommon abilities. Of his life little is known; and that little claims no praise but what can be given to intel tuous purpose. His character, as given by Mr. Oldisworth with all the partiality of friendship, which is said by Dr. Burton to show "what fine things one man of parts can say of another," and which, however, comprises great part of what can be known of Mr. Smith, it is better to |