V.

Life's road let me cautiously view,
And no longer disdain to be wise
But redden such paths to pursue,

As my reason should hate or despise:
To crown both my age and my youth,

Let me mark where religion has trod; Since nothing but virtue and truth

Can reach to the throne of my

God.

THE BABBLER, No. 16.

No. CVII.

Sit quodvis simplex duntaxat et unum.

HORAT.

Be what you will, so you be still the same.
ROSCOMMON

THERE are few precepts, dictated, like the above, by judgment and experience, which, though originally confined to a particular application (as this to the formation of dramatic character), may not be adopted with success in the several branches of the same science, and even transferred into another. The direction which the poet gives us here, to preserve a regard for simplicity and uniformity, may be applied to the general design and main structure of a poem; and, if we allow them a still greater latitude of interpretation, may be found to convey a very useful rule, with respect to the inferior component parts which constitute a work.

A venerable pile of gothic architecture, viewed at a distance, or after the sober hand of time has stripped it of the false glare of meretricious ornament, communicates a sensation which the same object, under a closer inspection in its

highest degree of perfection, was incapable of producing, when the attention, solicited by a thousand minutia with which the hand of caprice and superstition had crowded its object, was unavoidably diverted from the contemplation of the main design.

In all points which admit of hesitation, the sister sciences are found to throw a corresponding lustre on each other. The impropriety of admitting ill-judged ornament, though connected, as in the above instance, with all that is awful and venerable, must be evident to the most superficial observer; and this circumstance should lead us to conjecture, that the same principle existed in a similar though superior science. Originality of sentiment, vivacity of thought, and loftiness of language, may conduct the reader to the end of a work, though awkwardly designed and injudiciously constructed; while the nicest adherence to poetic rule would be found insufficient to compensate for meanness of thought, or vulgarity of expression. That these two faults should infallibly destroy all title which any writer might otherwise have to the name of poet, should seem self-evident; and yet a fault which appears to be a composition of them both, has, I think, in some instances passed without reprehension; I mean al

lusion to local circumstance: I shall therefore make this paper the vehicle of a few observations on this practice.

Nothing can be more directly adverse to the spirit of poetry, considered under one of its definitions as a universal language, than whatever confines it to the comprehension of a single people, or a particular period of time.

Blackmore, a name now grown to be a byword in criticism, in the original structure of his poem, was little, if at all, inferior to the great prototypes of antiquity; but that simplicity and uniformity so visible in the first design, was, in every other respect, conformably to the taste of his time, violated and neglected. It is said, that the most desolate deserts of Africa are distinguished by little insulated spots clothed with perpetual verdure; and it sometimes happens, that beautiful passages present themselves in the Prince Arthur; as in the first book:

The heavens serenely smil'd, and every sail.

Fill'd its broad bosom with the indulgent gale.

But when lines like these occur, we must consider it, to borrow an expression from a contemporary poet,

a gift no less,

Than that of manna in the wilderness.

Scriptural allusions, like the foregoing, were much in fashion among the poets of that period; and, in this particular, so earnest a follower of it was not to be left behind: he has accordingly introduced his enchanter, Merlin, building seven altars, offering up on each a bullock and a ram, and attempting to curse the army of the hero, in imitation of Balaam, and with the same

success.

Dryden himself is strongly tinctured with the taste of the times; and those Dalilahs of the Town, to use his own expression, are plentifully scattered throughout his works, esteemed in the present age for those passages only in which he ventured to oppose his own taste to that of his readers, and which have already passed the ordeal of unmerited censure.

Nor is that narrowness of conception which confines a work to the comprehension of a particular portion of individuals, less reprehensible or less repugnant to the essential principles of poetry; and of this defect innumerable instances occur in both the authors above cited; with this difference, that, in one instance, we contemplate with regret the situation of an eminent genius constrained by his exigencies to postpone the powers of his own taste, and submit his judgment to the arbitrary dominion of a prevailing