may be adminiftered by any body: But true taste requires chafte, fevere, and fimple pleasures; and true genius will only be concerned in adminiftering fuch.

Lastly, on the fame principle on which we have decided on these questions concerning the abfolute merits of poems in profe, in all languages, we may, alfo, determine another, which has been put concerning the comparative merits of RHYMED, and what is called BLANK verse, in our own, and the other modern languages.

Critics and antiquaries have been follicitous to find out who were the inventors of rhyme, which fome fetch from the Monks, fome from the Goths, and others from the Arabians: whereas, the truth seems to be, that rhyme, or the confonance of final fyllables, occurring at stated intervals, is the dictate of nature, or, as we may fay, an appeal to the ear, in all languages, and in fome degree pleafing in all. The difference is, that, in fome languages, these confonances are apt of themselves to occur fo often that they rather nauseate, than please, and fo, instead of being affected,

are

naturally runs into, even in conversation, and of which we are not without examples, in our old and beft writers for the comic ftage. But it is not wonderful that thofe critics, who take offence at English epic poems in rhyme, because the Greek and Latin only obferved quantity, fhould require English comedies to be written in profe, though the Greek and Latin comedies were compofed in verfe. For the ill application of examples, and the neglect of them, may be well enough expected from the fame men, fince it does not appear that their judgment was employed, or the reafon of the thing attended to, in either inftance.

AND THUS much for the idea of UNIVERSAL POETRY. It is the art of treating any fubject in such a way as is delightful to us; that is, IN

found moft AN ORNA

Whatever deferves the name of POEM muft unite these three properties; only in different degrees of each, according to its nature. For the art of every kind of

poetry

poetry is only this general art fo modified as the nature of each, that is, its more immediate and fubordinate end, may respectively require.

We are now, then, at the well-head of the poetic art; and they who drink deeply of this fpring, will be beft qualified to perform the reft. But all heads are not equal to thefe copious draughts; and, befides, I hear the fober reader admonishing me long fince

Lufifti fatis atque BIBISTI; Tempus abire tibi eft, ne POTUM LARGIUS

f

DISSERTATION II.

ON

THE PROVINCES OF THE DRAMA

N the former Essay, I gave an idea, or

IN

flight sketch, of Univerfal Poetry. In this, I attempt to deduce the laws of one of its kinds, the Dramatic, under all its forms. And I engage in this task, the rather, be. cause, though much has been said on the fubject of the drama, writers feem not to have taken fufficient pains to distinguish with exactness, its feveral fpecies.

I deduce the laws of this poem, as I did those of poetry at large, from the confideration of its end: not the general end of poetry, which alone was proper to be confidered in the former cafe, but the proximate end of this kind. For from these ends, in fubordination to that, which governs the genus, or which all poetry, as M 2 fuch,