come a critic by your precepts, and a poet by your example. Since I have seen your Eclogues, I cannot be much pleased with my own; however, you have not taken away all my vanity, so long as you give me leave to profess myself yours, etc. LETTER IV. FROM MR. WALSH. July 20, 1706. I HAD no sooner returned you thanks for the favour of your letter, but that I was in hopes of giving you an account at the same time of my journey to Windsor; but I am now forced to put that quite off, being engaged to go to my corporation at Richmond in Yorkshire. I think you are perfectly in the right in your notions of Pastoral; but I am of opinion, that the redundancy of wit you mention, though it is what pleases the common people, is not what ever pleases the best judges. Pastor Fido indeed has had more admirers' than Aminta; but I will venture there is a great deal of difference between the Corisca, which is a to say, 7 Tasso, on seeing this Pastoral Comedy represented, is reported to have said; "If Guarini had not seen my Amintas, he had not excelled it." But this was not a true judgment. La Filli di Sciro, of Bonarelli, is also full of unnatural characters, and of distorted conceits. It was first published, says Fontanini, at Ferrari, in quarto, with cuts, 1607; afterward splendidly at Paris, in quarto; also by Cramoisy, 1621; and elegantly at London, in octavo, 1728. character generally admired by the ordinary judges, is intolerable in a Pastoral; and Bonarelli's fancy of making his shepherdess in love with two men equally, is not to be defended, whatever pains he has taken to do it. As for what you ask of the liberty of borrowing; it is very evident the best Latin Poets have extended this very far; and none so far as Virgil, who was the best of them. As for the Greek Poets, if we cannot trace them so plainly, it is perhaps because we have none before them; it is evident that most of them borrowed from Homer, and Homer has been accused of burning those that wrote before him, that his thefts might not be discovered. The best of the modern Poets in all languages are those that have the nearest copied the Ancients. Indeed, in all the common subjects of Poetry, the thoughts are so obvious, (at least if they are natural,) that whoever writes last, must write things like what have been said before9: But they may as well applaud the An The superiority of ancient writers over the modern, may perhaps not unjustly be ascribed, to a genial climate, that gave such a happy temperament of body as was most proper to produce fine sensations; to a language most harmonious, copious, clear, and forcible; to the many public encouragements and honours bestowed on the cultivators of literature; to the emulation excited among the generous youth, by exhibitions of their various performances at the solemn games; to the freedom of their governments; to an inattention to the arts of lucre and commerce, which totally engross and debase the minds of the moderns; and above all, to an exemption from the necessity of overloading their natural faculties with learning and languages, with which we in these later times are obliged to qualify ourselves for writers, if we expect to be read. This subject has been discussed at much length, and with much acuteness and ingenuity, by Dr. Hurd, in the Discourse on cients for the arts of eating and drinking, and accuse the Moderns of having stolen those inventions from them: it being evident in all such cases, that whoever lived first, must first find them out. It is true, indeed, when unus et alter Assuitur pannus, when there are one or two bright thoughts stolen, and all the rest is quite different from it, a poem makes a very foolish figure: But when it is all melted down together, and the gold of the Ancients so mixed with that of the Moderns, that none can distinguish the one from the other, I can never find fault with it. I cannot however but own to you, that there are others of a different opinion, and that I have shewn your verses to some who have made that objection to them. I have so much company round me while I write this, and such a noise in my ears, that it is impossible I should write any thing but nonsense, so must break off abruptly. I am, Sir, Your most affectionate, And most humble Servant. Poetical Imitation in which the difficulty of distinguishing RESEMBLANCES from THEFTS, is endeavoured to be pointed out. LETTER V. FROM MR. WALSH. Sept. 9, 1706. Ar my return from the North I received the favour Ат of your letter, which had lain there till then. Having been absent about six weeks, I read over your Pastorals again, with a great deal of pleasure, and to judge the better read Virgil's Eclogues, and Spencer's Calendar, at the same time; and, I assure you, I continue the same opinion I had always of them. By the little hints you take upon all occasions to improve them, it is probable you will make them yet better against winter; though there is a mean to be kept even in that too, and a man may correct his verses till he takes away the true spirit of them; especially if he submits to the correction of some who pass for great Critics, by mechanical rules, and never enter into the true design and Genius of an author. I have seen some of these that would hardly allow any one good Ode in Horace, who cry Virgil wants fancy, and that Homer is very incorrect. While they talk at this rate, one would think them above the common rate of mortals: But generally they are great admirers of Ovid and Lucan; and when they write themselves, we find out all the mystery. They scan their verses upon their fingers; run after Conceits and glaring thoughts: Their poems are all made up of Couplets1, of which the first may be the last, or the last first, without any sort of prejudice to their works; in which there is no design, or method, or any thing natural or just. For you are certainly in the right, that in all writings whatsoever (not poetry only) nature is to be followed; and we should be jealous of ourselves for being fond of Similies, Conceits, and what they call saying fine Things. When we were in the North, my Lord Wharton shewed me a letter he had received from a certain great General in Spain; I told him I would by all means have that General recalled and set to writing here at home, for it was impossible that a man with so much Wit as he shewed, could be fit to command an Army, or do any other business. As for what you say of Expression: It is indeed the same thing to Wit, as Dress is to Beauty: I have seen many women over-dressed, and several look better in a careless night-gown, with their hair about their ears, than Mademoiselle Spanheim dressed for a ball. I do not design to be in London till towards the parliament: then I shall certainly be there; and hope by that time you will have finished your Pas 'The most usual and common blemish of all modern English poetry; and in great measure occasioned, and almost unavoidably, by the nature and use of rhyme. 2 The Earl of Peterborow. "It is maxim, says Hume, propagated by the dunces of all countries, that a man of genius is unfit for business. Mr. Walsh's remark will be thought very innocent, when the reader is informed that it was made on the Earl of Peterborow, just before the glorious campaigns of Barcelona and Valentia. P. |