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Again, Macbeth in a soliloquy before he murders

Duncan,

Befides, this Duncan

Hath born his faculties fo meek, bath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead, like angels, trumpet-tongu'd against
The deep damnation of his taking off :
And Pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blaft, or heav'n's cherubim bors'd
Upon the fightless couriers of the air
Shall blow the borrid deed in every eye;
That tears fall drown the wind.

Many other paffages of this kind might be mention'd, which pass off tolerably well in the mouth of the actor, while the imagination of the spectator helps and supplies every seeming inaccuracy; but they will no more bear a clofe view, than fome defignedly unfinished, and rough sketches of a masterly hand.

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BOOK II.

SECT. I.

AVING spoken of the poet's province, I return to the fubject of critics and criticism; and fhall confider not what they have been, but what their affumed character requires them to be. If a critic, as the original word imports, can truly judge of authors, he must have formed his judgment from the perfecteft models. I Horace fends

1 Hor. art. poet. . 323. and 268. Horace does not

feem to have any great opinion of his countrymen, as to their learned capacity. Plautus and Terence are copies of the Grecian ftage; the latter, Caefar called, dimidiate Menander. If their tragic poets were no better than Seneca, their lofs is not greatly to be regretted. It might not be difpleafing to the reader to know Virgil's opinion; and he might be pretty certain 'twas the fame as Horace's, had not he left us his teftimony, which is as follows, even where he is celebrating the Roman worthies: Aen. VI, 842.

Excudent alii fpirantia mollius aera,

Credo equidem, et vivos ducent de marmore vultus,
Orabunt caufas melius, &c.

'Tis truly obferved by Mr. Ascham in his Scholemaster, P. 55. That Athens within the memory of one man's life bred greater men, than Rome in the compafs of those feven hundred years when it flourished moft.

you

you to Grecian writers to gain a right relish of literature.

"Graiis ingenium, Graiis dedit ore rotundo "Mufa loqui.

"Vos exemplaria Graeca

"Nocturna verfate manu, verfate diurna.

When a taste and relifh is well modeled and formed, and our general science of what is fair and good improved; 'tis no very difficult matter to apply this knowledge to particulars. But if I have no ftandard of right and wrong, no criterion of foul and fair; if I cannot give a reason for my liking or disliking, how much more becoming is modefty and filence?

I would beg leave to know, what ideas can he be supposed to have of a real fublime in manners and fentiments, who has never gone further for his inftruction, than what a puffy rhetorician, who wrote in a barbarous age, can teach? Or what admirer of monkish fophifts and cafuifts, can ever have any relish at all?

The human mind naturally and neceffarily perfues truth, it's fecond felf; and, if not rightly fet to work, will foon fix on fome falfe appearance and borrowed reprefentations of what is fair and good here it will endeavour to acquiefce,

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quiefce, difingenuously impofing on itself, and maintaining it's ground with deceitful arguments. This will account for that seeming contradiction in many critical characters, who fo acutely can fee the faults of others, but at the fame time are blind to the follies of their own espoused sentiments and opinions.

There is moreover in every person a particular bent and turn of mind, which, whenever forced a different way than what nature intended, grows auwkard. Thus Bentley, the greatest fcholar of the age, took a ftrange kind of refolution to follow the mufes: but whatever skill and fagacity he might difcover in other authors, yet his Horace and Milton will testify to the world as much his want of elegance and a poetic taft, as his epiftle to Dr. Mills and his differtations on Phalaris will witness for his being, in other refpects, the best critic that ever appeared in the learned world.

Ariftarchus feem'd very much to resemble Bentley. Cicero tells us in his epiftles, that whatever displeased him he would by no means

2 Cicer. epift. ad famil. III, 2. Sed fi, ut fcribis, eae literae non fuerunt difertae, fcito meas non fuiffe. Ut enim Ariftarchus Homeri verfum negat quem non probat ; fic tu (libet enim mihi jocari) quod difertum non erit, ne putetis

meum.

believe

believe was Homer's: and I don't doubt but he found editors, whofe backs were broad enough to bear whatever loads of reproaches he was pleased to lay on them. 3 The old rhapsodists, the Spartan lawgiver, or Athenian tyrant, might have ferved his turn much better than fuch a ghost of an editor, the very coinage of his brain, as was lately raised up by the Dr. when he fo miferably mangled Milton.

However this unbridled fpirit of criticism should by all means be reftrained. For these trifles, as they appear, will lead to things of a more ferious confequence. By these means even the credit of all books must fink in proportion to the number of critical, as well as uncritical hands, thro' which they pass.

There is one thing, I think, fhould always be remember'd in fettling and adjusting the context of authors; and that is, if they are worthy of criticism, they are worthy of fo much regard as to be prefumed to be in the right, 'till there are very good grounds to suppose them wrong. A critic should come with abilities to defend, not with arrogance at once to start up a corrector. Is this lefs finifhed? Is it not fo intended to fet off what is principal, and requires

3 Aelian. Var. Hift. XIII, 14.
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