whatsoever, in spite of all disadvantages from translations into so different tongues and common prose. If an opinion of some learned men, both modern and ancient, could be allowed, that Esdras was the writer or compiler of the first historical part of the Old Testament, though from the same Divine inspiration as that of Moses and the other prophets, then the Psalms of David would be the first writings we find in Hebrew; and next to them, the Song of Solomon, which was written when he was young, and Ecclesiastes when he was old. So that from all sides, both sacred and profane, it appears that poetry was the first sort of writing known and used in the several nations of the world.

It may seem strange, I confess, upon the first thought, that a sort of style so regular and so difficult should have grown in use before the other, so easy and so loose: but if we consider what the first end of writing was, it will appear probable from reason as well as experience; for the true and general end was but the help of memory in preserving that of words and of actions which would otherwise have been lost, and soon vanish away with the transitory passage of human breath and life. Before the discourses and disputes of philosophers began to busy or amuse the Grecian wits, there was nothing written in prose, but either laws, some short sayings of wise men, or some riddles, parables, or fables, wherein were couched by the ancients many strains of natural and moral wisdom and knowledge, and besides these, some short memorials of persons, actions, and of times. Now it is obvious enough to conceive how much easier all such writings should be learned and remembered in verse than in prose, not only by the pleasure of measures and of sounds, which gives a great impression to memory, but by the order of feet which makes a great facility of tracing one word after another by knowing what sort of foot or quantity must necessarily have preceded or followed the words we retain and desire to make up.

This made poetry so necessary before letters were invented, and so convenient afterwards; and shows that the great honour and general request wherein it has always been, has not proceeded only from the pleasure and delight, but likewise from the usefulness and profit of poetical writings.

cillides, Theognis, and several other of the smaller Greek poets, with what passes for Pythagoras, are instructions in morality: the first book of Hesiod and Virgil's Georgics, in agriculture, and Lucretius in the deepest natural philosophy. Story is the proper subject of heroic poems, as Homer and Virgil in their inimitable Iliads and Æneids; and fable, which is a sort of story, in the Metamorphosis of Ovid. The lyric poetry has been chiefly conversant about love, though turned often upon praise too; and the vein of pastorals and eclogues has run the same course, as may be observed in Theocritus, Virgil, and Horace, who was, I think, the first and last of true lyric poets among the Latins. Grief has been always the subject of elegy, and reproach that of satire. The dramatic poesy has been composed of all these, but the chief end seems to have been instruction, and under the disguise of fables, or the pleasure of story, to show the beauties and the rewards of virtue, the deformities and misfortunes or punishment of vice; by examples of both, to encourage one, and deter men from the other; to reform ill custom, correct ill manners, and moderate all violent passions. These are the general subjects of both parts; though comedy give us but the images of common life, and tragedy those of the greater and more extraordinary passions and actions among men. To go further upon this subject would be to tread so beaten paths that to travel in them only raises dust, and is neither of pleasure nor of use.

For the changes that have happened in poetry, I shall observe one ancient, and the others that are modern will be too remarkable in the declines or decays of this great empire of wit. The first change of poetry was made by translating it into prose, or clothing it in those loose robes or common veils that disguised or covered the true beauty of its features and exactness of its shape. This was done first by Æsop in Greek, but the vein was much more ancient in the Eastern regions, and much in vogue, as we may observe, in the many parables used in the Old Testament, as well as in the New. And there is a book of fables, of the sort of Esop's, translated out of Persian, and pretended to have been so, into that language out of the ancient Indian; but though it seems genuine of the Eastern countries, yet I do not take it to be so old, nor This leads me naturally to the subjects of to have so much spirit as the Greek. The next poetry, which have been generally praise, in- succession of poetry in prose seems to have been struction, story, love, grief, and reproach. in the Milesian tales, which were a sort of little Praise was the subject of all the songs and pastoral romances, and though much in request psalms mentioned in Holy Writ, of the hymns in old Greece and Rome, yet we have no exof Orpheus, of Homer, and many others; of the amples that I know of them, unless it be the carmina secularia in Rome, composed all and longi pastoralia, which gives a taste of the great designed for the honour. of their gods; of Pindar, delicacy and pleasure that was found so generally Stesichorus, and Tyrtæus, in the praises of in those sort of tales. The last kind of poetry virtue or virtuous men. The subject of Job is in prose is that which in later ages has overrun instruction concerning the attributes of God and the world, under the name of 1omances, which, the works of Nature. Those of Simonides, Pho-though it seems modern, and a production of

the Gothic genius, yet the writing is ancient. The remainders of Petronius Arbiter seem to be of this kind, and that which Lucian calls his true history; but the most ancient that passes hy the name is Heliodorus, famous for the author's choosing to lose his bishopric rather than disown that child of his wit. The true spirit or vein of ancient poetry in this kind seems to shine most in Sir Philip Sidney, whom I esteem both the greatest poet and the noblest genius of any that have left writings behind them, and published in ours or any other modern language; a person born capable not only of forming the greatest ideas, but of leaving the noblest examples, if the length of his life had been equal to the excellence of his wit and virtues.

With him I leave the discourse of ancient poetry, and to discover the decays of this empire, must turn to that of the modern, which was introduced after the decays, or rather extinction, of the old, as if true poetry being dead, in apparition of it walked about. This mighty change arrived by no smaller occasions, nor nore ignoble revolutions, than those which destroyed the ancient empire and government of Rome, and erected so many new ones upon their ruins, by the invasions and conquests or the general inundations of the Goths or Vandals, and other barbarous or northern nations, upon those parts of Europe that had been subject to the Romans. After the conquests made by Cæsar upon Gaul, and the nearer parts of Germany, which were continued and enlarged in the times of Augustus and Tiberius, by their lieutenants or generals, great numbers of Germans and Gauls resorted to the Roman armies, and to the city itself, and habituated themselves there, as many Spaniards, Syrians, Grecians had done before, upon the conquest of those countries. This mixture soon corrupted the purity of the Latin tongue, so that in Lucan, but more in Seneca, we find a great and harsh alloy entered into the style of the Augustan age. After Trajan and Adrian had subdued many German and Scythian nations on both sides of the Danube, the commerce of those barbarous people grew very frequent with the Romans; and I am apt to think that the little verses ascribed to Adrian were in imitation of the Runic poetry. The Scythicas pati pruinas of Florus shows their race or climate; and the first rhyme that ever I read in Latin, with little allusions of letters or syllables, is in that of Adrian, at his death:

"O animula, vagula, blandula,
Quæ nunc abibis in loca,
Palidula, lurida, timidula,

Nec ut soles dabis joca."

It is probable the old spirit of poetry, being lost or frighted away by those long or bloody wars, with such barbarous enemies, this new ghost began to appear in its room, even about that age; or else that Adrian, who affected that

piece of learning as well as others, and was not able to reach the old vein, turned to a new one, which his expeditions into those countries made more allowable in an emperor, and his example recommended to others. In the time of Boetius, who lived under Theodoric in Rome, we find the Latin poetry smell rank of this Gothic imitation, and the old vein quite seared up.

The

After that age, learning grew every day more and more obscured by that cloud of ignorance which, coming from the north, and increasing with the numbers and successes of those barbarous people, at length overshadowed all Europe for so long together. The Roman tongue began itself to fail or be disused, and by its corruption made a way for the generation of three new languages in Spain, Italy, and France. courts of the princes and nobles, who were of the conquering nations, for several ages used their Gothic, or Franc, or Saxon tongues, which were mingled with those of Germany, where some of the Goths had sojourned long, before they proceeded to their conquest of the more southern or western parts. Wherever the Roman colonies had long remained, and their language had been generally spoken, the common people used that still, but vitiated with the base alloy of their provincial speech. This, in Charlemagne's time, was called in France Rustica Romana, and in Spain, during the Gothic reigns there, Romance; but in England, from whence all the Roman soldiers and great numbers of the Britons most accustomed to their commerce and language had been drained for the defence of Gaul against the barbarous nations that invaded it about the time of Valentinian, that tongue being wholly extinguished (as well as their own), made way for the entire use of the Saxon language. With these changes, the ancient poetry was wholly lost in all these countries, and a new sort grew up by degrees, which was called by a new name of rhymes, with an easy change of the Gothic word runes, and not from the Greek rhythms, as is vulgarly supposed.

Runes was properly the name of the ancient Gothic letters or characters, which were invented first or introduced by Odin, in the colony or kingdom of the Getes or Goths, which he planted in the north-west parts and round the Baltic Sea, as has been before related. But because all the writings they had among them for many ages were in verse, it came to be the common name of all sorts of poetry among the Goths, and the writers or composers of them were called runers or rhymers. They had, likewise, another name for them, or for some sorts of them, which was vüses or wises, and because the sages of that nation expressed the best of their thoughts, and what learning and prudence they had, in these kind of writings, they that succeeded best and with most applause were termed wise men; the good sense or learning, or useful knowledge contained in them, was called

wisdom, and the pleasant or facetious vein among them was called wit, which was applied to all spirit or race of poetry, where it was found in any men, and was generally pleasing to those that heard or read them.

Of these runes there was in use among the Goths above a hundred several sorts, some composed in longer, some in shorter lines, some equal, and others unequal, with many different cadences, quantities, or feet, which, in the pronouncing, make many different sorts of original or natural tunes. Some were framed with allusions of words, or consonance of syllables, or of letters, either in the same line or in the distich, or by alternate succession and resemblance, which made a sort of jingle that pleased the ruder ears of that people; and because their language was composed mostly of monosyllables, and of so great numbers, many must end in the same sound. Another sort of runes was made, with the care and study of ending two lines, or each other of four lines, with words of the same sound, which, being the easiest, requiring less art and needing less spirit, because a certain chime in the sounds supplied that want and pleased common ears; this in time grew the most general among all the Gothic colonies in Europe, and made rhymes or runes pass for the modern poetry in these parts of the world.

This was not used only in their modern languages, but during those ignorant ages, even in that barbarous Latin which remained, and was preserved among the monks and priests to distinguish them by some show of learning from the laity, who might admire it, in what degree soever, and reverence the professors, when they themselves could neither write nor read, even in their own language. I mean not only the vulgar laymen, but even the generality of nobles, barons, and princes among them; and this lasted till the ancient learning and languages began to be restored in Europe about two hundred years ago.

The common vein of the Gothic runes was what is termed dithyrambic, and was of a raving or rambling sort of wit or invention, loose and flowing, with little art or confinement to any certain measures or rules; yet some of it wanted not the true spirit of poetry in some degree, or that natural inspiration which has been said to arise from some spark of poetical fire, wherewith particular men are born. And such as it was, it served the turn, not only to please, but even to charm the ignorant and barbarous vulgar, where it was in use. This made the runers among the Goths as much in request and admired as any of the ancient and most celebrated poets were among the learned nations; for among the blind, he that has one eye is a prince. They were, as well as the others, thought inspired, and the charms of their Runic conceptions were generally esteemed divine or magical at least.

commonly the same with those already observed in the true ancient poetry. Yet this vein was chiefly employed upon the records of bold and martial actions, and the praises of valiant men that had fought successfully or died bravely, and these songs or ballads were usually sung at feasts, or in circles of young or idle persons, and served to inflame the humour of war, of slaughter, and of spoils among them. More refined honour or love had little part in the writings, because it had little in the lives or actions of those fierce people and bloody times. Honour among them consisted in victory, and love in rapes and in

lust.

But as the true flame of poetry was rare among them, and the rest was but wild-fire that sparkled or rather crackled a while, and soon went out with little pleasure or gazing of the beholders; those runers, who could not raise admiration by the spirit of their poetry, endeavoured to do it by another, which was that of enchantments. This came in to supply the defect of that sublime and marvellous, which has been found both in poetry and prose among the learned ancients. The Gothic runers, to gain and establish the credit and admiration of their rhymes, turned the use of them very much to incantations and charms, pretending by them to raise storms, to calm the seas, to cause terror in their enemies, to transport themselves in the air, to conjure spirits, to cure diseases, and stanch bleeding wounds, to make women kind or easy, and men hard or invulnerable; as one of their most ancient runers affirms of himself and his own achievements, by force of these magical arms, the men or women who were thought to perform such wonders or enchantments, were, from vüses or wises, the name of those verses wherein their charms were conceived, called wizards or witches.

Out of this quarry seem to have been raised all those trophies of enchantment that appear in the whole fabric of the old Spanish romances which were the productions of the Gothic wit among them during their reign; and after the conquest of Spain by the Saracens, they were applied to the, long wars between them and the Christians. From the same, perhaps, may be derived all the visionary tribe of fairies, elves, and goblins, of sprites and of bul-beggars, that serve not only to fright children into whatever their nurses please, but sometimes, by lasting impressions, to disquiet the sleeps and the very lives of men and women till they grow to years of discretion, and that God knows is a period of time which some people arrive to but very late, and perhaps others never. At least this belief prevailed so far among the Goths and their races, that all sorts of charms were not only attributed to their runes or verses, but to their very characters, so that about the eleventh century they were forbidden and abolished in Sweden, as they had been

The subjects of them were various, but before in Spain, by civil and ecclesiastical com

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of wars, of schools and of camps, of romances and legends, yet he must be confessed to have kept up his vein of ridicule by saying many things so malicious, so smutty, and so profane, that either a prudent, a modest, or a pious man could not have afforded, though he had never so much of that coin about him; and it were to be wished that the wits who have followed his vein had not put too much value upon a dress, that better understandings would not wear (at least in public), and upon a compass they gave themselves, which other men would not take. The matchless writer of Don Quixote is much more to be admired, for having made up so excellent a composition of satire or ridicule, without those ingredients, and seems to be the best and highest strain that ever was or will be reached by that vein.

statues of Priapus among the gardens of Rome. In the decays of the Roman learning and wit, as well as language, Martial, Ausonius, and others, fell into this vein, and applied it indifferently to all subjects, which was before restrained to one, and dressed it something more cleanly than it was born. This vein of conceit seemed proper for such scraps or splinters into which poetry was broken, and was so eagerly followed as almost to overrun all that was composed in our several modern languages; the Italian, the French, the Spanish, as well as English, were for a great while full of nothing else but conceit. It was an ingredient that gave taste to compositions which had little of themselves; it was a sauce that point to meat that was flat, and some life to colours that were fading; and, in short, those who could not furnish spirit, supplied it with this salt, which may preserve things or bodies that are dead, but is, for aught I know, of little use to the living, or necessary to meats that have much or pleasing tastes of their own. However it were, this vein first overflowed our modern poetry, and with too little distinction or judgment that we would have conceit as well as rhyme in every two lines, and run through all our long scribbles as well as the short, and the whole body of the poem,poetry, and indeed to all virtue and good qualiwhatever it is. This was just as if a building should be nothing but ornament, or clothes, nothing but trimming; as if a face should be covered over with black patches, or a gown with spangles, which is all I shall say of it.

Another vein which has entered and helped to corrupt our modern poesy is that of ridicule, as if nothing pleased but what made one laugh, which yet come from two very different affections of the mind; for as men have no dis position to laugh at things they are most pleased with, so they are very little pleased with many things they laugh at.

But this mistake is very general, and such modern poets as found no better way of pleasing, thought they could not fail of it by ridiculing. This was encouraged by finding conversation run so much into the same vein, and the wits in vogue to take up with that part of it which was formerly left to those that were called fools, and were used in great families, only to make the company laugh. What opinion the Romans had of this character appears in those lines of Horace:

"Absentem qui rodit amicum,
Qui non defendit alio culpante solutos
Qui captat risus hominum famamq; dicacis
Fingere qui non visa potest, commissa tacere
Qui nequit, Hic Niger est, Hunc in Romane caveto."

And it is pity the character of a wit in one age should be so like that of a black in another.

Rabelais seems to have been father of the ridicule, a man of excellent and universal learning as well as wit; and though he had too much game given him for satire in that age, by the customs of courts and convents, of processes and

It began first in verse, with an Italian poem called "La Secchia Rapita," was pursued by Scarron in French, with his Virgil Travesty, and in English by Sir John Mince, Hudibras, and Cotton, and with greater height of burlesque in the English than, I think, in any other language. But let the execution be what it will, the design, the custom, and example are very pernicious to

ties among men, who must be disheartened by findits how unjustly and undistinguished they fall under the lash of raillery, and this vein of ridiculing the good as well as the ill, the guilty and the innocent together. It is a very poor though common 'pretence to merit, to make it appear by the faults of other men. A mean wit on beanty may pass in a room, where the rest of the company are allowed to have none; it is something to sparkle among diamonds, but to shine among pebbles is neither credit nor value worth the pretending.

"Besides these two veins brought in to supply the defects of the modern poetry, much application has been made to the smoothness of language or style, which has, at the best, but the beauty of colouring in a picture, and can never make a good one without spirit and strength. The academy set up by Cardinal Richelieu, to amuse the wits of that age and country, and divert them from raking into his politics and ministry, brought this in vogue; and the French wits have for this last age been in a manner wholly turned to the refinement of their language, and indeed with such success, that it can hardly be excelled, and runs equally through their verse and their prose. The same vein has been likewise much cultivated in our modern English poetry, and by such poor recruits have the broken forces of this empire been of late made up, with what success I leave to be judged by such as consider it in the former heights, and the present declines both of power and of honour; but this will not discourage, however it may affect, the true lovers of this mistress. who must ever think her a beauty in rags as well as in robes.