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times remember the great honours and fortunes of your family, not always the losses; cherish those veins of good humour that are sometimes so natural to you, and sear up those of ill that would make you so unnatural to your children and to yourself. But above all, that you would enter upon the cares of your health and your life, for your friends' sake at least, if not for your

own.

OF POETRY.

The two common shrines to which most men offer up the application of their thoughts and their lives, are profit and pleasure; and by their devotions to either of these they are vulgarly distinguished into two sects, and called either busy or idle men. Whether these terms differ in meaning, or only in sound, I know very well may be disputed, and with appearance enough, since the covetous man takes perhaps as much pleasure in his gains as the voluptuous does in his luxury, and would not pursue his business unless he were pleased with it, upon the last account of what he most wishes and desires, nor would care for the increase of his fortunes, unless he proposed thereby, that of his pleasures too, in one kind or other, so that pleasure may be said to be his end, whether he will allow to find it in his pursuit or no. Much ado there has been, many words spent, or (to speak with more respect to the ancient philosophers) many disputes have been raised upon this argument, I think to little purpose, and that all has been rather an exercise of wit than an inquiry after truth; and all controversies that can never end, had better, perhaps, never begin. The best is to take words as they are most commonly spoken and meant, like coin as it most currently passes, without raising scruples upon the weight of the alloy, unless the cheat or the defect be gross and evident. Few things in the world, or none, will bear too much refining; a thread too fine spun will easily break, and the point of a needle too finely filed. The usual acceptation takes profit and pleasure for two different things, and not only calls the followers or votaries of them by several names of busy and of idle men, but distinguishes the faculties of the mind that are conversant about them, calling the operations of the first wisdom, and of the other wit, which is a Saxon word that is used to express what the Spaniards and Italians call ingenio, and the French esprit, both from the Latin; but I think wit more peculiarly signifies that of poetry, as may occur upon remarks of the Runic language. To the first of these are attributed the inventions or productions of things generally esteemed the most necessary, useful, or profitable to human life, either in private possessions or public institutions: to the other, those writings or discourses which are the most pleasing or entertaining to all that read or hear them; yet, according to the opinion of those

that link them together, as the inventions of sages and lawgivers themselves, do please as well as profit those who approve and follow them. So those of poets instruct and profit as well as please such as are conversant in them, and the happy mixture of both these, makes the excellency in both those compositions, and has given occasion for esteeming, or at least for calling heroic virtue and poetry, divine.

The names given to poets, both in Greek and Latin, express the same opinion of them in those nations; the Greek signifying makers or creators, such as raise admirable frames and fabrics out of nothing, which strike with wonder and with pleasure the eyes and imaginations of those who behold them; the Latin makes the same word common to poets and to prophets. Now, as creation is the first attribute and highest operation of Divine power, so is prophecy the greatest emanation of Divine Spirit in the world. As the names in those two learned languages, so the causes of poetry are, by the writers of them, to be divine, and to proceed from a celestial fire or Divine inspiration, and by the vulgar opinions recited or related to in many passages of those authors, the effects of poetry were likewise thought divine and supernatural, and power of charms and enchantments were ascribed to it.

"Carmina vel cœlo possunt deducere lunam, Carminibus Circe socios mutavit Ulyssis, Frigidus in pratis cantando rumpitur anguis."

But I can easily admire poetry, and yet without adoring it; I can allow it to arise from the greatest excellency of natural temper, or the greatest race of native genius, without exceeding the reach of what is human, or giving it any approaches of divinity, which is, I doubt, debased or dishonoured by ascribing to it anything that is in the compass of our action, or even comprehension, unless it be raised by an immediate influence from itself. I cannot allow poetry to be more divine in its effects than in its causes, nor any operation produced by it, to be more than purely natural, or to deserve any other sort of wonder than those of music or of natural magic, however any of them have appeared to minds little versed in the speculations of nature, of occult qualities and the force of numbers, or of sounds. Whoever talks of drawing down the moon from heaven by force of verses or of charms, either believes not himself, or too easily believes what others told him, or perhaps follows an opinion begun by the practice of some poet upon the facility of some people, who, knowing the time when an eclipse would happen, told them he would by his charms call down the moon at such an hour, and was by them thought to have performed it.

When I read that charming description in Virgil's eighth eclogue of all sorts of charms and fascinations by verses, by images, by knots, by numbers, by fire, by herbs, employed upon

occasion of a violent passion, from a jealous or disappointed love; I have recourse to the strong impressions of fables and of poetry, to the easy mistakes of popular opinions, to the force of imagination, to the secret virtues of several herbs, and to the powers of sounds: and I am sorry the natural history or account of fascination has not employed the pen of some person of such excellent wit and deep thought and learning as Casaubon, who wrote that curious and useful Treatise of Enthusiasm, and by it discovered the hidden or mistaken sources of that delusion so frequent in all regions and religions of the world, and which had so fatally spread over our country in that age, in which this treatise was so seasonably published. It is much to be lamented that he lived not to complete that work in the second part he promised; or that his friends neglected the publishing it, if it were left in papers, though loose and unfinished. I think a clear account of enthusiasm and fascination from their natural causes, would very much deserve from mankind in general, as well as from the commonwealth of learning; might, perhaps, prevent so many public disorders, and save the lives of many innocent, deluded, or deluding people, who suffer so frequently upon account of witches and wizards. I have seen many miserable examples of this kind in my youth at home; and though the humour or fashion be a good deal worn out of the world within thirty or forty years past, yet it still remains in several remote parts of Germany, Sweden, and some other countries.

enough in the person that gives it. Nor is it any great wonder that such force should be found in poetry, since in it are assembled all the powers of eloquence, of music, and of picture, which are all allowed to make so strong impressions upon humane minds. How far men have been affected with all or any of these, needs little proof or testimony. The examples have been known enough in Greece and in Italy, where some have fallen downright in love with the ravishing beauties of a lovely object drawn by the skill of an admirable painter; nay, painters themselves have fallen in love with some of their own productions, and doated on them, as on a mistress or a fond child, which distinguishes among the Italians the several pieces that are done by the same hand into several degrees of those made-con studio, con diligenza, or con amore, whereof the last are ever the most excelling. But there needs no more instances of this kind than the stories related and believed by the best authors, as known and undisputed; of the two young Grecians, one whereof ventured his life to be locked up all night in the temple, and satisfy his passion with the embraces and enjoyment of a statue of Venus that was there set up, and designed for another sort of adoration; the other pined away and died for being hindered his perpetually gazing, admiring, and embracing a statue at Athens.

The powers of music are either felt and known by all men, and are allowed to work strangely upon the mind and the body, the passions and the blood, to raise joy and grief, to give pleasure and pain, to cure diseases and the mortal sting of the tarantula, to give motions to the feet as well as to the heart, to compose disturbed thoughts, to assist and heighten devotion itself. We need no recourse to the fables of Orpheus or Amphion, or the force of their music upon fishes and beasts; it is enough that we find the charming of serpents, and the cure or allay of an evil spirit or possession, attributed to it in sacred writ.

But to return to the charms of poetry: if the forsaken lover, in that eclogue of Virgil, had expected only from the force of her verses, or her charms, what is the burthen of the song, to bring Daphnis home from the town where he was gone and engaged in a new amour; if she had pretended only to revive an old fainting flame, or to damp a new one that was kindling in his breast, she might, for aught I know, have compassed such ends by the power of such charms, and without other than very natural enchantments. For there is no question but true poetry may have the force to raise passions, and to allay them, to change and to extinguish them, to temper joy and grief, to raise love and fear, nay, to turn fear into boldness, and love into indifference, and into hatred itself; and I easily believe that the disheartened Spartans were new animated, and recovered their lost courage, by the songs of Tyrtæus; that the cruelty and revenge of Phaloris were changed by the odes of Stesichorus into the greatest kindness and esteem, and that many men were as passion-hand, as if he had been frighted with words, ately enamoured by the charms of Sappho's wit and poetry as by those of beauty in Flora or Thais, for it is not only beauty gives love, but love gives beauty to the object that raises it; and if the possession be strong enough, let it come from what it will, there is always beauty

For the force of eloquence, that so often raised and appeased the violence of popular commotions, and caused such convulsions in the Athenian state, no man need more, to make him acknowledge it, than to consider Cæsar, one of the greatest and wisest of mortal men, come upon the tribunal, full of hatred and revenge, and with a determined resolution to condemn Labienus, yet upon the force of Cicero's eloquence (in an oration for his defence), begin to change countenance, turn pale, shake to that degree that the papers he held fell out of his

that never was so with blows, and at last change all his anger into clemency, and acquit the brave criminal, instead of condemning him.

Now, if the strength of these three mighty powers be united in poetry, we need not wonder that such virtues and such honours have been

attributed to it, that it has been thought to be inspired, or has been called divine, and yet I think it will not be disputed that the force of wit, and of reasoning, the height of conceptions and expressions, may be found in poetry as well as in oratory, the life and spirit of representation or picture as much as in painting, and the force of sounds as well as in music; and how far these three natural powers together may extend, and to what effect (even such as may be mistaken for supernatural or magical), I leave it to such men to consider, whose thoughts turn to such speculations as these, or who, by their native temper and genius, are in some degree disposed to receive the impressions of them. For my part, I do not wonder that the famous Dr Harvey, when he was reading Virgil, should sometimes throw him down upon the table, and say he had a devil; nor that the learned Meric Casaubon should find such charming pleasures and emotions, as he describes, upon the reading some parts of Lucretius; that so many should cry, and with downright tears, at some tragedies of Shakespeare, and so many more should feel such turns or curdling of their blood upon the reading or hearing some excellent pieces of poetry, nor that Octavia fell into a swoon at the recital made by Virgil of those verses in the sixth of his Eneid.

This is enough to assert the powers of poetry and discover the ground of those opinions of old, which derived it from Divine inspirations, and gave it so great a share in the supposed effects of sorcery or magic. But as the old romances seem to lessen the honour of true prowess and valour in their knights, by giving such a part in all their chief adventures to enchantment, so the true excellency and just esteem of poetry seems rather debased than exalted by the stories or belief of the charms performed by it, which, among the northern nations, grew so strong and so general that, about five or six hundred years ago, all the Runic poetry came to be decried, and those ancient characters in which they were written to be abolished, by the zeal of bishops, and even by orders and degrees of State, which has given a great maim, or rather an irrecoverable loss to the story of those northern kingdoms, the seat of our ancestors in all the western parts of Europe.

The more true and natural source of poetry may be discovered by observing to what god this inspiration was ascribed by the ancients, which was Apollo, or the sun, esteemed among them the god of learning in general, but more particularly of music and of poetry. The mystery of this fable means, I suppose, that a certain noble and vital heat of temper, but especially of the brain, is the true spring of these two parts or sciences. This was that celestial fire which gave such a pleasing motion and agitation to the minds of those men that have been so much admired in the world, that raises such in

finite images of things so agreeable and delight. ful to mankind; by the influence of this sun are produced those golden and inexhausted mines of invention which has furnished the world with treasures so highly esteemed, and so universally known and used, in all the regions that have yet been discovered. From this arises that elevation of genius which can never be produced by any art or study, by pains or by industry, which cannot be taught by precepts or examples; and therefore is agreed by all to be the pure and free gift of Heaven, or of nature, and to be a fire kindled out of some hidden spark of the very first conception.

But though invention be the mother of poetry, yet this child is like all others born naked, and must be nourished with care, clothed with exactness and elegance, educated with industry, instructed with art, improved by application, corrected with severity, and accomplished with labour and with time, before it arrives at any great perfection or growth. It is certain that no composition requires so many several ingredients, or of more different sorts than this, nor that to excel in any qualities, there are necessary so many gifts of nature, and so many improvements of learning and of art. For there must be a universal genius of great compass as well as great elevation. There must be a sprightly imagination or fancy, fertile in a thousand productions, ranging over infinite ground, piercing into every corner, and by the light of that true poetical fire, discovering a thousand little bodies or images in the world, and similitudes among them, unseen to common eyes, and which could not be discovered without the rays of that sun.

Besides the heat of invention and liveliness of wit, there must be the coldness of good sense and soundness of judgment to distinguish between things and conceptions, which at first sight, or upon short glances, seem alike; to choose among infinite productions of wit and fancy, which are worth preserving and cultivating, and which are better stifled in the birth, or thrown away when they are born, as not worth bringing up. Without the forces of wit, all poetry is flat and languishing; without the suc cours of judgment, it is wild and extravagant. The true wonder of poesy is, that such contraries must meet to compose it-a genius both penetrating and solid, in expression both delicacy and force; and the frame or fabric of a true poem must have something both sublime and just, amazing and agreeable. There must be a great agitation of mind to invent, a great calm to judge and correct; there must be upon the same tree, and at the same time, both flower and fruit. To work up this metal into exquisite figure, there must be employed the fire, the hammer, the chisel, and the file. There must be a general knowledge both of nature and of arts, and to go the lowest that can be, there are

required genius, judgment, and application, for without this last all the rest will not serve turn, and none ever was a great poet that applied himself much to anything else.

When I speak of poetry, I mean not an ode or an elegy, a song or a satire, nor by a poet the composer of any of these, but of a just poem; and after all I have said, it is no wonder there should be so few that appeared, in any parts or any ages of the world, or that such as have, should be so much admired, and have almost divinity ascribed to them, and to their works. Whatever has been among those who are mentioned with so much praise or admiration by the ancients, but are lost to us, and unknown any further than their names, I think no man has been so bold among those that remain to question the title of Homer and Virgil, not only to the first rank, but to the supreme dominion in this state, and from whom, as the great lawgivers as well as princes, all the laws and orders of it are, or may be, derived. Homer was, without dispute, the most universal genius that has been known in the world, and Virgil the most accomplished. To the first must be allowed the most fertile invention, the richest vein, the most general knowledge, and the most lively expression: to the last, the noblest ideas, the justest institution, the wisest conduct, and the choicest elocution. To speak in the painter's terms, we find in the works of Homer the most spirit, force, and life; in those of Virgil, the best design, the truest proportions, and the greatest grace; the colouring in both seems equal, and, indeed, is in both admirable. Homer had more fire and rapture, Virgil more light and swiftness, or at least the poetical fire was more raging in one, but clearer in the other, which makes the first more amazing, and the latter more agreeable. The ore was either in one, but in the other more refined, and better alloyed to make up excellent work. Upon the whole, I think it must be confessed that Homer was, of the two, and perhaps of all others, the vastest, the sublimest, and the most wonderful genius; and that he has been generally so esteemed, there cannot be a greater testimony given than what has been by some observed, that not only the greatest masters have found in his works the best and truest principles of all their sciences or arts, but that the noblest nations have derived from them the original, or their several races, though it be hardly yet agreed whether his story be true or fiction. In short, these two immortal poets must be allowed to have so much excelled in their kinds as to have exceeded all comparison, to have even extinguished emulation, and in a manner confined true poetry not only to their two languages, but to their very persons. And I am apt to believe so much of the true genius of poetry in general, and of its elevation in these two particulars, that I know not whether of all the numbers of mankind that live within the

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compass of a thousand years; for one man that is born capable of making such a poet as Homer or Virgil, there may not be a thousand born capable of making as great generals of armies, or ministers of state, as any the most renowned in story.

I do not here intend to make a further critic upon poetry, which were too great a labour; nor to give rules for it, which were as great a presumption; besides, there has been so much paper blotted upon these subjects in this curious and censuring age that it is all grown tedious or repetition. The modern French wits (or pretenders) have been very severe in their censures, and exact in their rules, I think to very little purpose; for I know not why they might not have contented themselves with those given by Aristotle and Horace, and have translated them rather than commented upon them, for all they have done has been no more; so as they seem, by their writings of this kind, rather to have valued themselves than improved anybody else. The truth is, there is something in the genius of poetry too libertine to be confined to so many rules; and whoever goes about to subject it to such constraints, loses both its spirit and grace, which are ever native, and never learned, even of the best masters. It is as if, to make excellent honey, you should cut off the wings of your bees, confine them to their hive or their stands, and lay flowers before them, such as you think the sweetest, and like to yield the finest extraction; you had as good pull out their stings, and make arrant drones of them. They must range through fields, as well as gardens, choose such flowers as they please, and by proprieties and scents they only know and distinguish: they must work up their cells with admirable art, extract their honey with infinite labour, and sever it from the wax with such distinction and choice, as belongs to none but themselves to perform or to judge.

It would be too much mortification to these great arbitrary rulers among the French writers, or our own, to observe the worthy productions that have been formed by their rules, the honour they have received in the world, or the pleasure they have given mankind; but to comfort them, I do not know there was any great poet in Greece after the rules of that art laid down by Aristotle; nor in Rome, after those by Horace, which yet none of our moderns pretend to have outdone. Perhaps Theocritus and Lucan may be alleged against this assertion; but the first offered no further than at idyls or eclogues; and the last, though he must be avowed for a true and happy genius, and to have made some very high flights, yet he is so unequal to himself, and his muse is so young, that his faults are too noted to allow his pretences. "Feliciter audet" is the true character of Lucan, as of Ovid-"Lusit amabiliter." After all, the utmost that can be achieved, or, I think, pre

tended, by any rules in this art, is but to hinder some men from being very ill poets, but not to make any man a very good one. To judge who is so, we need go no further for instruction than three lines of Horace:

"Ille meum qui pectus inaniter angit, Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet,

Ut magus, et modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenis."

He is a poet,

Who vainly anguishes my breast,
Provokes, allays, and with false terror fills,
Like a magician, and now sets me down
In Thebes, and now in Athens.

Whoever does not affect and move the same present passions in you that he represents in others, and at other times raise images about you, as a conjurer is said to do spirits, transport you to the places and to the persons he describes, cannot be judged to be a poet, though his measures are never so just, his feet never so smooth, or his sounds never so sweet.

But instead of critique, or rules concerning poetry, I shall rather turn my thoughts to the history of it, and observe the antiquity, the uses, the changes, the decays, that have attended this great empire of wit.

their precepts of wisdom, as well as their records, their religious rites as well as their charms and incantations, to have been all in verse.

Among the Hebrews, and even in sacred writ, the most ancient is by some learned men esteemed to be the Book of Job, and that it was written before the time of Moses, and that it was a translation into Hebrew out of the old Chaldean or Arabian language. It may probably be conjectured that he was not a Jew, from the place of his abode, which appears to have been seated between the Chaldeans, of one side, and the Sabeans (who were of Arabia), on the other; and by many passages of that admirable and truly inspired poem, the author seems to have lived in some parts near the mouth of Euphrates, or the Persian Gulf, where he contemplated the wonders of the deep, as well as the other works of Nature common to those regions. Nor is it easy to find any traces of the Mosaical rites or institutions, either in the Divine worship, or the morals related to, in those writings: for not only sacrifices and praises were much more ancient in religious service than the age of Moses; but the opinion of one Deity, and adored without any idol or representation, was professed and received among the ancient Persians and Etruscans and Chaldeans. So that if Job was a Hebrew, it is probable he may have been of the race of Heber, who lived in Chaldea, or of Abraham, who is supposed to have left that country for the profession or worship of one God, rather than from the branch of Isaac and Israel, who lived in the land of Canaan. Now I think it is out of controversy that the Book of Job was written originally in verse, and was a poem upon the subject of the justice and power of God, and in vindication of His pro

It is, I think, generally agreed to have been the first sort of writing that has been used in the world; and in several nations to have preceded the very invention or usage of letters. This last is certain in America, where the first Spaniards met with many strains of poetry, and left several of them translated into their language, which scem to have flowed from a true poetic vein, before any letters were known in those regions. The same is probable of the Scythians, the Grecians, and the Germans. Aristotle says, the|vidence, against the common arguments of atheAgathyrsi had their laws all in verse; and Tacitus, that the Germans had no annals nor records but what were so; and for the Grecian oracles delivered in them we have no certain account when they began, but rather reason to believe it was before the introduction of letters from Phoenicia among them. Pliny tells it, as a thing known, that Pherecides was the first who wrote prose in the Greek tongue, and that he lived about the time of Cyrus, whereas Homer and Hesiod lived some hundreds of years before that age; and Orpheus, Linus, Musæus, some hundreds before them: and of the Sybils, several were before any of those, and in times as well as places whereof we have no clear records now remaining. What Solon and Pythagoras wrote is said to have been in verse, who were something older than Cyrus; and before them were Archilocus, Simonides, Tyrtæus, Sappho, Stesichorus, and several other poets famous in their times. The same thing is reported of Chaldea, Syria, and China; among the ancient western Goths (our ancestors) the Runic poetry seems to have been as old as their letters; and their laws,

istical men, who took occasion to dispute it, from the usual events of human things, by which so many ill and impious men seem happy and prosperous in the course of their lives, and so many pious and just men seem miserable or afflicted. The Spanish translation of the Jews in Ferrara, which pretends to render the Hebrew (as near as could be) word for word, and for which all translators of the Bible since have had great regard, gives us the two first chapters, and the last from the seventh verse in prose, as an historical introduction and conclusion of the work, and all the rest in verse, except the transitions from one part or person of this sacred dialogue to another.

But if we take the Book of Moses to be the most ancient in the Hebrew tongue, yet the song of Moses may probably have been written before the rest; as that of Deborah, before the Book of Judges, being praises sung to God upon the victories or successes of the Israelites, related in both. And I never read the last without observing in it, as true and noble strains of poetry and picture, as in any other language

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