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Proceeding from this remark, I shall now beg leave to enter my protest against an opinion which has been sometime fashionable, and which, if admitted, would straiten in no slight degree the extent of Poetick Licence;" That the success of these fictions will not be great, when they have no longer any footing in popular belief;—and that no modern poet ought to revive those fairy tales in an epick poem." Notwithstanding the authoritativeness of this assertion, I cannot bring myself to believe that fanciful imagery can have suffered much from the circumstance of our being more enlightened than our ancestors. For I find it difficult to reconcile this critical dogma with that general interest which the old poetical romances continue to excite on account of this very antiquated imagery. And if such imagery is found to delight us in a poem long written, I know of no reason why it should not in one which is recently given to publicity.

It is true that we should censure as unnatural in a modern poet many things which

P HURD on Chiy. and Rom. Let. x.

we should pardon, though improbable in Ariosto, on the grounds of those allowances which are to be made for the credulity of his age but it is not less true, that the modern poet by constructing his fictions with more art, and greater verisimilitude, may stand in need of no such indulgences. How far this is practicable has been already pointed out in those rules which have been laid down for ascertaining the justness, and directing the constitution of poetical fictions and let it be remembered, that to these rules those very fictions are exceptions, in which Ariosto stands in need of palliation.

When the poet has secured these points, he cannot have much to fear from the scepticism or incredulity of his readers. Among readers of this complection as there are some of whom he can have as little hopes as ambition of making proselytes to his fanciful creed; there are others who will find that what his descriptions want in point of truth, is more than compensated in point of art; a quality that almost equally secures that delight which is the ultimate end of poetical composition. And

the more incredulous any reader is found, the more it must be admitted will his delight be raised at observing those fictions which his reason leads him to reject as false, represented with all the consistency of realities.

CHAP. II.

OF THE POETICAL EPOS.

We have already observed those endeavours which have been employed to exclude the poetical romance from holding any place among the legitimate compositions of poetry, on account of its fictions offering so great a violence to nature and reality. It cannot therefore appear strange that the liberty of employing a system of spiritual agents and supernatural imagery, to which criticism gives the name of machinery, should have been likewise opposed in the poetical epos: nor will objections to its introduction appear to the philosophical thinkers of the present day to be devoid of the strongest support from nature and reason. When this mode of reasoning in criticism first became fashionable, has been incidentally determined by the authour of "Letters on Chivalry," in tracing the declining popularity of the Gothick fictions and Italian poetry in England, in the sinking credit of which it appears to have been considerably involved. The period of so

regretted a revolution in our taste has been fixed at the time of the restoration; and the origin of those sentiments, which particularly affected poetical machinery ascribed to Sir W. Davenant and Mr. Hobbes. The authority of these opinions had however no considerable standing, and with the exception of a few proselytes, among whom Sir W. Temple occurs, they continue to lose ground every day; among the last persons that I now remember, who appear to avow them openly, is M. de Voltaire: they appear to have expired under the feeble support of Lord Kaimes.

On considering the different powers of reasoning by which these opinions on the propriety of machinery in an epick poem have been maintained, and those with which they have been combated, the advantage now appears considerably on the side of the former. Of this I could offer a complete evidence, in producing the defence of the necessity of celestial intervention in the epopee given by Dr. Hurd. The length of the passage unfitting it for transcription, I shall beg leave to refer the reader to it, as it

• HURD on Chiv, and Rom. Let. ix.