THOSE who set up for critics in poetry, and are met with in ordinary conversation, may be reduced to two classes; such as judge by rule, or such as judge by nature. The first are men of little or no taste, who haying read over the mechanical rules, and learned a few terms of art, are able to point out palpable faults or beauties in an author, and thereby gain a reputation for learning. The others are generally talkers, of glittering fancies and hurried imaginations, who despise art and method, who admire what was never said before, and affect the character of wits. It is pleasant to see the men of judgment start at a turn or a metaphor; and the men of taste, as they call themselves, yawn at a plain and noble description. A natural critic looks upon a regular as a dunce; and the regular thinks the natural little better

than a coxcomb. If you ask the one his opinion
of a tragedy, he will repeat a rant with rapture,
and dwell with delight on a simile; the other
will applaud the strictness of the unities, and
discover that the action hath a beginning, a
middle, and an end. Jack Lively, who pities
the ancients, insults his adversary, Sam Scruple,
very often with Waller and Cowley.
night he repeated, in a tone of triumph,

The trembling strings about her fingers crowd,
And tell their joy for every kiss aloud :
Small force there needs to make them tremble so
Touch'd by that hand, who would not do so too?

Last

Scruple shook his head; and having harangued upon strength and simplicity of thought, retorted the following lines upon him out of the same author, with an action solemn and the atrical:

Bermuda, wall'd with rocks, who does not know?
That happy island where huge lemons grow!

To conclude this comparison: the cautious critics are like the subjects of an arbitrary prince; the licentious are in a state of barbarous anarchy: but the free critic, like a free Briton, is governed by the laws which he himself votes for; whose liberty is checked by the

restraints of truth, and the monarchy of right

reason.

A man who trusts entirely to his natural talents, is often governed by caprice, and can give no reason why he is pleased. Thus a fanciful fellow, who amuses himself with the woods and mountains which he discovers in the clouds, is angry if his friends are not charmed with the airy landskip. On the contrary, a critic who tastes just according to law, deceives his own heart, and talks of beauties celebrated by others, which he cannot see himself; like good-natured travellers, who own they perceive objects at a distance, out of pure compliance to the master of the company: but a true judge of writing is like a painter or a statuary, who doth not content himself with shewing fine images of nature, unless he likewise informs the spectators wherein the beauties consist; whence arises the propriety of colouring, and justness of symmetry.

To a good natural discernment, art must therefore be joined, to finish a critick. Without a natural talent, all the acquirements of learning are vain; but nature, unassisted, will go no great lengths. The soul of man indeed loves truth alone; but is easily led to mistake appearances for realities, if judgment, which is built upon

experience, doth not direct penetration. Life, being short, will not give us time to gather a necessary stock of experience ourselves; for which reason we must borrow from our ancestors, as they borrowed from those who went before them. By their writings we can trace the several arts back to their originals, and learn in an hour, what by tedious and gradual deductions was the work perhaps of several ages. A natural critic will readily own that he formed his judgment by degrees, that he grew wiser and wiser by experience; one who joins art to nature doth the same thing, but doth it more effectually; he throws himself back into ancient time, lives a thousand years of criticism in a month, and, without stirring out of his closet, is a Greek, a Roman, a Frenchman, and a Briton.

A moderate search into antiquity will teach us, that nature is not cramped, but assisted, by artful authors; who complain of such restraint, are like clowns under the discipline of the dancing-master; whereas the well-bred know, that a graceful motion is the most easy, and art is only the unlearning of what is unnatural. In ancient Greece and Rome, rhetoric was there, fore the foundation of their polite learning. Their children were instructed early in the rules of method, and the propriety of thought

and style. Having imbibed in their youth these unerring maxims of good sense, we find their most trifling compositions at least uniform; and whether they write in the dramatic, lyric, or epic manner, they seldom fail to keep up to the several characteristics which distinguish those various kinds from one ano ther. An heroic poet assumes a character ma nifestly distinct from a writer of pastoral; a complainer in elegy is under a different inspiration from that which breaks out in an ode. The same man, under these various denomi nations, is in effect so many persons. If he speaks, if he thinks, in one kind as he doth in the others, he confounds two or three charac ters. It is not the muse, the lover, the swain, or the god, but Bavius at hard labour in his study.

A nice and subtle judgment in poetry hath, in all polite nations, ancient and modern, been happily compared to the delicacy of taste. Now a taste cannot be fine, if it only distinguishes sweet from bitter, or pleasant from nauseous. No gentleman that drinks his bottle, pretends to a tolerable palate, unless he can distinguish the wines of France from those of Portugal; and if he is perfectly nice, he will tell you, with his eyes shut, what province, what mountain,