manners and characters, when he brought Menander's plays upon the Roman stage? 'Tis the bumours and customs of their own times, that people love to fee represented; not being over follicitous or interested in what is tranfacted in other countries. Hence 'twas wifely judged by Steele, in his imitation of the Andria, to work it into an English ftory. And 'twas barrenness of invention that made the Latin ftage-writers meerly tranflators. Indeed the Romans had few authors that can be called originals. Their government was military, and the foldier had the chief praise; the scholar stood only in a fecond rank. And just as Virgil and Horace began to flourish, a young tyrant fprung up, and riveted on the Romans by degrees fuch fhackles of fervitude, that they have never even to this day been able to shake them off. And should it ever be the misfortune of this island to feel the effects of tyranny, we must bid farewell to our Miltons and Shakespeares, and take up contentedly again with popish mysteries and moralities. SECT. SECT. XV. T was finely and truly observed by a certain IT philofopher, whom the rhetorician' Longinus praises, that popular government (where the publick good alone, in contradiftinction to all private interest and selfish systems, prevails) is the only nurse of great genius's. For while the laws, which know no foolish compaffion, correct the greater vices, men are left to be either perfuaded or laughed out of their leffer follies. Hence will neceffarily arife orators, poets, philofophers, critics, &c. Wit will polish and refine wit; and he, whom nature has marked for a flave, will ever continue in his proper fphere. In tyrannic forms of government, the whole is reversed; the people are well dealt with, if they are amused with even mock-virtues and mockfciences. This is vifible in a neighbouring nation, where modern honour is fubstituted in the room of ancient honefty; hypocritical address, inftead of morals and manners; flattery and fubordinate homage is introduced, and eafily swallowed, that every one in his turn might play the petty tyrant on his inferior. = Longin. Ie in. feat. XLIV. 3 In fuch a state, where nature is so distorted and debased, what poet, if he dared, can imitate naturally men and manners? And should accidentally a genius arife, yet he'll foon find it neceffary to flatter defpotic power. For perfect writers we must therefore go to Athens; not even to Rome; nor feek it in Virgil or Horace. For who, I would afk, can bear the reading fuch a blasphemous piece of flattery as this? O Melibace, Deus nobis haec otia fecit. 2 Namque erit ille mihi femper-deus. All the beautiful lines in that eclogue, cannot atone for the vileness of these. think of the following? Or what can we Sive mutata juvenem figura Ales in terris imitaris almae Filium Majae, PATIENS VOCARI 3 Horace certainly had forgotten his patron 3 Brutus, and all the doctrines he learnt at Athens, when 2 Semper-deus, a perpetual deity: upi, as the grammarians fay. So Callimachus in his hymn to Jupiter, Θεὸν αὐτὸν, αεὶ μέγαν, ἀεὶ ἄνακα ; For fo the verse is to be written. 3 Horace was early patronized by Brutus. When he was at Athens he imbibed the principles of the Stoic phi lofophy : when he praised this young tyrant for his bloody profecutions of the Romans, who attempted the recovery of their ancient liberties and free conftitution. But you have none of these abandoned principles in the Athenian writers; none in old Homer, or in our modern Milton. One could wish that Shakespeare was as free from flattery, as Sophocles and Euripides. But our liberty was then in it's dawn; so that some pieces of flattery, which we find in Shakespeare, must be ascribed to the times. To omit fome of his rants about kings, which border on + blafphemy; 4 how lofophy at the breaking out of the civil wars he joined himself to Brutus, who gave him the command of a Roman legion. His fortune being ruin'd, he went to the court of Auguftus, turned rake, atheist, and poet. Afterwards he grew fober, and a Stoic philofopher again.-Virgil had not thofe private obligations to Brutus: his ruin'd circumstances sent him to court. An Emperor, and such a minister as Maecenas could easily debauch a poor poet. But at length Virgil, as well as Horace, was willing to retreat : and at last he ordered his divine poem to be burnt, not because it wanted perfection as an epic poem, but because it flattered the fubverter of the conftitution. 4 In Macbeth A& II. Macd. Moft facrilegious murther hath broke ope how abruptly has he introduced, in his Macbeth, a physician giving Malcolm an account of Edward's touching for the king's evil? And this, to pay a fervile homage to king James, who highly valued himself for a miraculous power, (as he and his credulous fubjects really believed,) of curing a kind of scrophulous humours, which frequently are known to go away of themselves in either fex, when they arrive at a certain age. In his K. Henry VIII. the ftory which fhould have ended at the marriage of Anna Bullen, is lengthened out on purpofe to make a christening of Elizabeth; and to introduce by way phecy a complement to her royal person and dignity and what is ftill worse, when the play was fome time after acted before K. James, another prophetical patch of flattery was tacked to it. If a fubject is taken from the Roman history, he feems afraid to do justice to the citizens. of pro In K. John A& V. Hubert is fpeaking of the monk who poison'd K. John. A refolved villain Whofe bowels fuddenly burft out. So 'tis written of Judas, Acts I, 18. He fell headlong and burft afunder: ixáxnos μéo. You fee he has Chrift in view whenever he speaks of kings, and this was the courtlanguage:- I wish it never went farther. The |