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Θέλω λέγειν Αρείδας

Θέλω δὲ Κάδμον άδειν.

κ. τ. λ.

Ερως πολ ̓ ἐν ῥόδοισι
Κοιμωμένην μέλιτζαν

κ. τ. λ.

Imitated, much for the worfe, from the Κηριοκλέπτης of Theocritus.

Εἰς ἐρωμένην.

Εδωκα τῇ ἐταίρᾳ

Φίλαμ ̓, ἔρωτος ὄζου,

Λέγων, Φίλαμα τότο

Φιλίας τε καὶ ἔρωτος
Μνημεῖον αἰὲν ἔσω.
Κόρη δὲ μειδιῶσα,
Εφυ βραχεία μνημή
Δὸς ἄλλο, μὴ λάθωμας.

"A man may rime you fo (as the clown fays "in Shakespeare) eight years together, dinners "and suppers and sleeping hours excepted: 'tis "the right butterwomen's rank to market."

Tho' a few lines may pass often unsuspected, as thofe of Muretus's did with Scaliger; yet when they happen to be inferted into the body

of

of a work, and when their very features betray their bastardy, one may venture not only to mark them for not being genuine, but entirely to remove them. In K. Henry the fifth, there is a scene between Katharine and an old woman, where Mr. Pope has this remark, “ I "have left this ridiculous scene as I found it; " and am forry to have no colour left, from any of the editions, to imagine it interpo"lated." But with much less colour Mr. Pope has made many greater alterations; and this scene is rightly omitted in the late elegant edition printed at Oxford. But 'tis a hard matter to fix bounds to criticifm. However in our fubfequent book we will try whether or no, by the help of fome rules, we cannot regulate a little its rage.

66

U 3 BOOK

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BOOK III.

HEN one confiders the various tribes of rhetoricians, grammarians, etymologists, &c. of ancient Greece: and here find the wifest and best of philofo

I

phers inculcating grammatical niceties to his scholars; not so foreign to his grand design of bettering mankind, as we now perhaps may imagine when again we confider that the Romans followed the Grecian steps; and here see a Scipio and Laelius joining with an African slave in polishing the Latin language, and translating the politeft of the Attic authors; and some time after read of 2 Cicero himself, that he, when his country was distracted with civil commotions, should trouble his head with fuch pedantic accuracies, as whether he should write ad Piracea, Piraecum, or in Piraceum-When, I say all this is confidered, and then turn our eyes homeward, and behold every thing the reverse ; can we wonder that the ancients should have a polite language, and that we should hardly emerge out of our pristine and Gothic barbarity?

1 See Plato in Cratyl and Xen. Toμ. L. III. c. 13. and L. IV. c. 6.

2 Cicer. in Epift. ad Att. VII. 3.

Amongst

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Amongst many other things we want a good grammar and dictionary: we must know what is proper, before we can know what is elegant and polite by the use of these, the meaning of words might be prefixed, the Proteus-nature, if poffible, of ever-shifting language might in fome measure be ascertained, and vague phrases and ambiguous fentences brought under fome rule and regulation. But a piece of idle wit fhall laugh all fuch learning out of doors and the notion of being thought a dull and pedantic fellow, has made many a man continue a blockhead all his life. Neither words nor grammar are fuch arbitrary and whimsical things, as fome imagine and for my own part, as I have been taught from other kind of philosophers, so I believe, that right and wrong, in the minutest fubjects, have their standard in nature, not in whim, caprice or arbitrary will: fo that if our grammarian, or lexicographer, fhould by chance be a difciple of modern philofophy; should he glean from France and the court his refinements of our tongue, he would render the whole affair, bad as it is, much worse by his ill management. No one can write without fome kind of rules and for want of rules of authority, many learned men have drawn them up for U 4 themselves.

themselves. Ben Johnson printed his English Grammar. If Shakespeare and Milton never published their rules, yet they are not difficult to be traced from a more accurate confideration of their writings. Milton's rules I fhall omit at prefent; but fome of Shakespeare's, which favour of peculiarity, I fhall here mention: because when these are known, we shall be less liable to give a loose to fancy, in indulging the licentious spirit of criticism; nor fhall we then fo much prefume to judge what Shakespeare ought to have written, as endeavour to discover and retrieve what he did write.

RULE I.

Shakespeare alters proper names according to the English pronunciation.

Concerning this liberty of altering proper names, Milton thus apologizes in Smectymnuus, "If in dealing with an out-landish name, they "thought it best not to fcrew the English mouth "to a harsh foreign termination, fo they kept "the radical word, they did no more than the 66 elegant authors among the Greeks, Romans,

and at this day the Italians in fcorn of such a fervility use to do. Remember how they

❝ mangle

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