writers of acrostics, or to quacks who pass grains of corn through the eye of a needle, and adds, that all these puerilities have no other merit but that merely of overcoming a difficulty.

I allow that bad, verses are pretty much in this fituation. They differ from bad profe only in the rhyme; and rhyme alone neither makes the merit of the poet, nor the enter tainment of the reader. It is not mere spondees and dactyls that create delight in Virgil and Homer. But what charms every where is the fine harmony which refults from this difficult measure. He must be a fool who contents himfelf with overcoming difficulties for the meer pleasure of gaining fuch a victory; but he that draws from these very obftacles, beauties that are univerfally pleafing, must be a man of exquifite parts and judgment. It is extremely difficult to draw fine pictures, to carve fine ftatues, to compofe good music, or to write good verses, and therefore the name of the few great men who have furmounted all those obftacles, will probably last longer than the kingdoms where they were born.

I might take the liberty to difpute with Mr. de la Motte on fome other points: but that perhaps would look like a design of attacking him perfonally, and make me fufpected of malice towards him, which, in fact, I am as remote from, as I am from his opinions. I am much better pleased to avail myself of the ingenious obfervations he has interspersed in his book, than to undertake confuting fome which I do not take to be so well founded as the reft. It is enough that I have

endeavoured the defence of an art I am fond of, and which he ought to have defended him. felf.

I will add one word more, relative to an ode in favour of harmony, in which Mr. de la Faye attacks in fine poetry, the fyftem of Mr. de la Motte, who has answered him only in profe. I will quote a single stanza which unites almost all the reasons that I have alleged in my favour:

De la contrainte rigoureufe
Où l'efprit femble refferré
Il reçoit cette force heureufe,
Qui l'éleve au plus haut dégré.
Telle, dans des canaux preffée,
Avec plus de force élancée,
L'onde s'éleve dans les airs ;
Et la régle qui femble auftere,
N'eft qu'un art plus certain de plaire
Inféparable des beaux vers *.

Mr. de la Motte, who should have answered

* From these very rigourous laws,

By which we think ourselves restrain'd,
The mind it's ftrength and beauty draws,

And profiteth by being chain'd :
So, in narrower conduits prest,
Th' afcent of water's manag'd beft,
Jetteaus form, fo much in fashion.
The rules, which feem fo very hard,
Are rules to pleafe, which guide the bard
To poetry's perfection.

Thefe English lines are inferted merely to give the fenfe of the original, without the least attempt to c qual it in harmony or expreffion.

this just and graceful comparison by following the example of its author, enters into an enquiry whether the narrowness of the conduits contributes to the afcent of liquids, or whether that afcent is not, rather, in proportion to the height from which the waters firft defcend; and "Can we find, fays he, in verfe more than in profe, this primary elevation of thoughts, &c."

I believe Mr. de la Motte mistakes, as a philofopher; for it is certain, that without the constraint in which the water is held in pipes, it would not afcend, though it should have de fcended from ever fo great an elevation; and I think he is still in a greater error as a poet; for, it is very plain, that as the conftraint of verfification causes that harmony which is pleafing to the ear; in like manner from the kind of prison in which the waters flow, jetteaus refult, which are agreeable to the eye. Is not the comparison both just and pleasing? Mr. de la Faye certainly took a better method with Mr. de la Motte than I have done: He followed the example of an antient philofopher, who, in anfwer to a fophifter that denied motion, began to walk in his presence. Mr. de la Motte denies the harmony of verfes: a circumftance that alone fhould put me in mind to finish my profe.

On Elegance of Expreffion in Tragedy.

In the preface to Herod and Mariamne.*

I Tremble in giving this edition. I have remarked so many plays applauded on the stage, which have been afterwards defpifed in the clofet, that I am afraid left mine should meet with the fame fate. One or two interesting situations, the actors art, and the readiness which I fhewed to own and correct my faults, might have gained me fome approbation, when it was acted. But many more qualifications are necessary to fatisfy the cool deliberate reader. A plot regularly conducted will contribute but little to that end; and though it should be affecting, yet e ven that will not be fufficient: all poetical performances, though ever so perfect in other points,

* Mariamne was first acted in the year 1723. Baron, who was firnamed the Afop of the French, performed the part of Herod; but he was then too old to fupport this vehement character. Adrianne Le Couvreur, the best actress that ever exifted, played the part of Mariamne. This princess was to die by poifon which fhe was to take upon the ftage. It was about the festival of the kings or twelfth night that this play firft appeared, and a young coxcomb, who was in the pit, on feeing the empoifoned draught prefented to Mariamne, took into his head to cry out, "the queen drinks † ." All the Frenchmen began to laugh, and the peice was

muft néceffarily displease, if the lines are not ftrong and harmonious, and if there does not run through the whole a continued elegance and inexpreffible charm of verfe, that genius only can infpire, that wit alone can never attain, and about which, people have argued fo ill, and to fo little purpose, fince the death of Boileau.

It is a very grofs mistake to imagine that the verfification is the leaft effential and leaft difficult part of a theatrical piece. Mr. Racine, than whom, after Virgil, no man ever knew better the art of verfifying, was not of that opinion. His Phaedra alone employed him for two years. Pardon boasted of having finished his in three months. As the fuccefs, at the acting of a play, does not depend so much on the stile, as on the plot and the actors performance; it happened

difcontinued. It was given the next year, and the queen received another kind of death. The play ran forty nights.

Mr. Rouffeau who began to be zealous of the author, wrote at that time another Mariamne from Tristan's antient tragedy; he fent it to the players who could never act it; and to Didot the bookfeller who could never fell it. This was the origin of the long variance that fubfifted between our author and Rouffeau. Voltaire,

This alludes to a custom established in France of chufing a king by lot in every company on twelfth-night, who, on his part, names the queen. They often are at the expence of an entertainment, and both highly honoured-during that night; when they drink, it is proclaimed aloud, and their example followed by all their loyal fubjects.

Not the prefent philofopher Rouffeau, but another of the fame name, whofe reputation in poetry is very high among the French. His odes are remarkable fine.

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