pectation is disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

Life of Butler.

The merit of pleasing must be estimated by the means. Favour is not always gained by good actions or laudable qualities. Caresses and preferments are often bestowed on the auxiliaries of vice, the procurers of, pleasure, or the flatterers of vanity.

Life of Dryden.

Men may be convinced, but they cannot be pleased against their will. But though taste is obstinate, it is very variable, and time often prevails when arguments have failed..

Life of Congreve.

Pleasure is only received, when we believe that Rambler, vol. 2, p. 90.

we give it in return..

Pleasure is seldom such as it appears to others, nor often such as we represent it to ourselves.. Idler, vol. 1, p. 99

It is an unhappy state, in which danger is hid under pleasure.

Preface to Shakspeare, p. 1463

Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become mischievous, by endearing us to a state which we know to be transient and probatory. Self-deniak, is no virtue in itself; nor is it of any other use, than as it disengages us from the allurements of sense. In the state of future perfection, to which we all aspire, there will be pleasure without danger, and security without restraint...

PLEASURES OF LOCAL EMOTION.

To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were endeavoured; and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and far from my friends, be such frigid philosophy, conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be en-, vied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.

as may

Western Islands, p. 346.

POETS AND POETRY.

In almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered as the best. Whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once, or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent, which it received by accident at first; or whether, as the province of poetry is to describe nature and passion, which are always the same, the first writers took possession of the striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them but transcriptions of the same events, and new combinations of the same images: whatever be the reason, it is com-. monly observed, that the early writers are in possession of nature, and their followers of art.

Prince of Abyffinia, p. 64 & 65.

Compositions,

Compositions, merely pretty, have the fate of other pretty things, and are quitted in time for something useful. They are flowers fragrant and fair, but of short duration; or they are blossoms only to be valued as they foretel fruits.

Life of Waller.

It is a general rule in poetry, that all appropriated terms of art should be sunk in general expressions; because poetry is to speak an universal language. This rule is still stronger with regard to arts not liberal, or confined to few, and therefore far removed from common knowledge.

Life of Dryden.

Á mythological fable seldom pleases. The story we are accustomed to reject as false, and the manners are so distant from our own, that we know them not by sympathy, but by study.

Life of Smith.

No poem should be long, of which the purpose is only to strike the fancy, without enlightening the understanding by precept, ratiocination, or narrative. A blaze first pleases, and then tires. the sight.

Life of Fenton,

After all the refinements of subtility, and the dogmatism of learning, all claim to poetical honours must be finally decided by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted with literary prejudices,

Life of Gray.

Though poets profess fiction, the legitimate end of fiction is the conveyance of truth, and he that has flattery ready for all whom the vicissi06

tudes

tudes of the world happen to exalt, must be scorned as a prostituted mind, that may retain the glitter of wit, but has lost the dignity of virtue.

Life of Waller.

It does not always happen that the success of a poct is proportionate to his labour. The same observation may be extended to all works of imagination, which are often influenced by causes wholly out of the performer's power, by the hints of which he perceives not the origin, by sudden elevations of mind which he cannot produce in himself, and which sometimes rise when he expects them least.

Differtation on the Epitaphs of Pope, p. 320.

. Poets are scarce thought freemen of their company, without paying some duties, or obliging themselves to be true to love.

Life of Cowley.

The man that sits down to suppose himself charged with treason or peculation, and heats his mind by an elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he never was within the possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of his folly from the poet who praises beauty which he never saw, complains of jealousy which he never felt, supposes himself sometimes invited, and sometimes forsaken, fatigues · his fancy, and ransacks his memory, for images which may exhibit the gaiety of hope, or the gloominess of despair; and dresses his imaginary Chloris, or Phillis, sometimes in flowers fading as her beauty, and sometimes in gems lasting as her virtues.

Ibid.

One

One of the greatest sources of poetical delight is description, or the powers of presenting pictures to the mind.

Ibid.

Waller's opinion concerning the duty of a poet was- "That he should blot from his works any line that did not contain some motive to virtue." Life of Waller.

of

It is in vain for those who borrow, too many their sentiments and illustrations from the old mythology, to plead the example of the ancient poets. The deities which they produced so frequently were considered as realities, so far as to be received by the imagination, whatever sober reason might then determine. But of these images time has tarnished the splendor. A fiction not only detected but despised, can never afford a solid basis to any position, though sometimes it may furnish a transient allusion, or slight illustration. No modern monarch can be much exalted by hearing, that as Hercules has had his club, he has his navy.

Ibid.

Those who admire the beauties of a great poet, sometimes force their own judgment into a false approbation of his little pieces, and prevail upon themselves to think that admirable which is only singular. All that short compositions can commonly attain is neatness and elegance.

Life of Milton.

Bossu is of opinion, that the poet's first work is to find a moral, which his fable is afterwards to illustrate and establish.

Ibid.

Pleasure"