our knowledge or inventions, would deserve it, yet our languages would not there is no hope of their lasting long, nor of anything in them; they change every hundred years so as to be hardly known for the same, or anything of the former styles to be endured by the latter; so as they can no more last like the ancients, than excellent carvings in wood like those in marble or brass.

The three modern tongues most esteemed are Italian, Spanish, and French, all imperfect dialects of the noble Roman; first mingled and corrupted with the harsh words and terminations of those many different and barbarous nations, by whose invasions and excursions the Roman empire was long infested: they were afterwards made up into these several languages, by long and popular use, out of those ruins and corruptions of Latin, and the prevailing languages of those nations to which these several provinces came in time to be most and longest subjected (as the Goths and Moors in Spain, the Goths and Lombards in Italy, the Franks in Gaul), besides a mingle of those tongues which were original to Gaul and to Spain before the Roman conquests and establishments there. Of these, there may be some remainders in Biscay or the Asturias: but I doubt whether there be any of the old Gallic in France, the subjection there having been more universal, both to the Romans and Franks. But I do not find the mountainous parts on the North of Spain were ever wholly subdued, or formerly governed, either by the Romans, Goths, or Saracens, no more than Wales by Romans, Saxons, or Normans, after their conquests in our island, which has preserved the ancient Biscayan and British more entire than any native tongue of other provinces, where the Roman and Gothic or Northern conquests reached, and were for any time established.

It is easy to imagine how imperfect copies these modern languages, thus composed, must needs be of so excellent an original, being patched up out of the conceptions, as well as sounds, of such barbarous or enslaved people; whereas the Latin was framed or cultivated by the thoughts and uses of the noblest nation that appears upon any record of story, and enriched only by the spoils

of Greece, which alone could pretend to contest it with them. It is obvious enough what rapport there is, and must ever be, between the thoughts and words, the conceptions and languages of every country, and how great a difference this must make in the comparison and excellence of books; and how easy and just a preference it must decree to those of the Greek and Latin before any of the modern languages.

It may perhaps be further affirmed, in favour of the ancients, that the oldest books we have are still in their kind the best. The two most ancient that I know of in prose, among those we call profane authors, are Æsop's Fables and Phalaris's Epistles, both living near the same time, which was that of Cyrus and Pythagoras. As the first has been agreed by all ages since for the greatest master in his kind, and all others of that sort have been but imitations of his original; so I think the Epistles of Phalaris to have more grace, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any others I have ever seen, either ancient or modern. I know several learned men (or that usually pass for such under the name of critics) have not esteemed them genuine; and Politian, with some others, have attributed them to Lucian: but I think he must have little skill in painting, that cannot find out this to be an original; such diversity of passions, upon such variety of actions and passages of life and government, such freedom of thought, such boldness of expression, such bounty to his friends, such scorn of his enemies, such honour of learned men, such esteem of good, such knowledge of life, such contempt of death, with such fierceness of nature and cruelty of revenge, could never be represented but by him that possessed them; and I esteem Lucian to have been no more capable of writing, than of acting what Phalaris did. In all one writ, you find the scholar or the sophist; and in all the other, the tyrant and the commander.

6 This paragraph is all that Temple says about the "Epistles of Phalaris,” as to the genuineness of which the celebrated Bentley and Boyle controversy arose soon afterwards.

XIII.

JOHN DRYDEN.

(1631-1700.)

1. AN ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY.

[Written about 1665, revised 1684.]

LISIDEIUS Concluded in this manner; and Neander, after a little pause, thus answered him :

I shall grant Lisideius, without much dispute, a great part of what he has urged against us; for I acknowledge that the French contrive their plots more regularly, and observe the laws of comedy, and decorum of the stage (to speak generally), with more exactness than the English. Farther, I deny not but he has taxed us justly in some irregularities of ours which he has mentioned; yet, after all, I am of opinion, that neither our faults, nor their virtues, are considerable enough to place them above us.'

For the lively imitation of nature being in the definition of a play, those which best fulfil that law ought to be esteemed superior to the others. 'Tis true, those beauties of the French poesy are such as will raise perfection higher where it is, but are not sufficient to give it where it is not; they are indeed the beauties of a statue, but not of a man, because not animated with the soul of poesy, which is imitation of humour and passions: and this Lisideius himself, or any other, however biassed to their party, cannot but acknowledge, if he will either compare the humour of our comedies, or the characters of our serious plays, with theirs. He 1 Sir Charles Sedley, who had exalted the French drama above the English. 2 Dryden.

who will look upon theirs which have been written till these last ten years, or thereabouts, will find it an hard matter to pick out two or three passable humours amongst them. Corneille himself, their arch-poet, what has he produced except "The Liar"? and you know how it was cried up in France; but when it came upon the English stage, though well translated, and that part of Dorant acted to so much advantage as I am confident it never received in its own country, the most favourable to it would not put it in competition with many of Fletcher's or Ben Jonson's. In the rest of Corneille's comedies you have little humour; he tells you himself, his way is, first to show two lovers in good intelligence with each other; in the working up of the play, to embroil them by some mistake, and in the latter end to clear it, and reconcile them.

But of late years Moliere, the younger Corneille, Quinault, and some others, have been imitating afar off the quick turns and graces of the English stage. They have mixed their serious plays with mirth, like our tragi-comedies, since the death of Cardinal Richelieu, which Lisideius, and many others, not observing, have commended that in them for a virtue, which they themselves no longer practise. Most of their new plays are, like some of ours, derived from the Spanish novels. There is scarce one of them without a veil, and a trusty Diego, who drolls much after the rate of the "Adventures." But their humours, if I may grace them with that name, are so thin sown, that never above one of them comes up in any play. I dare take upon me to find more variety of them in some one play of Ben Jonson's, than in all theirs together as he who has seen the " Alchemist," "The Silent Woman," or Bartholomew Fair," cannot but acknowledge with me.

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I grant the French have performed what was possible on the ground-work of the Spanish plays; what was pleasant before, they have made regular: but there is not above one good play to be writ on all those plots; they are too much alike to please often,

3 "The Adventures of Five Hours,' a comedy imitated from the Spanish of Calderon, by Sir Samuel Tuke, with some assistance from the Earl of Bristol." - SCOTT.

which we need not the experience of our own stage to justify. As for their new way of mingling mirth with serious plot, I do not, with Lisideius, condemn the thing, though I cannot approve their manner of doing it. He tells us, we cannot so speedily recollect ourselves after a scene of great passion and concernment, as to pass to another of mirth and humour, and to enjoy it with any relish but why should he imagine the soul of man more heavy than his senses? Does not the eye pass from an unpleasant object to a pleasant, in a much shorter time than is required to this? and does not the unpleasantness of the first commend the beauty of the latter? The old rule of logic might have convinced him that contraries, when placed near, set off each other. A continued gravity keeps the spirit too much bent; we must refresh it sometimes, as we bait in a journey, that we may go on with greater ease. A scene of mirth, mixed with tragedy, has the same effect upon us which our music has betwixt the acts; which we find a relief to us from the best plots and language of the stage, if the discourses have been long. I must therefore have stronger arguments ere I am convinced that compassion and mirth in the same subject destroy each other; and in the mean time, cannot but conclude, to the honour of our nation, that we have invented, increased, and perfected, a more pleasant way of writing for the stage, than was ever known to the ancients or moderns of any nation, which is tragi-comedy.

And this leads me to wonder why Lisideius and many others should cry up the barrenness of the French plots above the variety and copiousness of the English. Their plots are single; they carry on one design, which is pushed forward by all the actors, every scene in the play contributing and moving towards it. Our plays, besides the main design, have under-plots, or by-concernments, of less considerable persons and intrigues, which are carried on with the motion of the main plot: as they say the orb of the fixed stars, and those of the planets, though they have motions of their own, are whirled about by the motion of the primum mobile1 in

The sphere in which the planets were conceived to be set.