LETTER IV.

FROM MR. WALSH.

July 20, 1706.

I

HAD no fooner returned you thanks for the favour of your letter, but that I was in hopes of giving you an account at the fame time of my journey to Windfor; but I am now forced to put that quite off, being engaged to go to my corporation at Richmond in Yorkshire. I think you are perfectly in the right in your notions of Pastoral; but I am of opinion, that the redundancy of wit you mention, though it is what pleases the common people, is not what ever pleases the best judges. Paftor Fido indeed has had more admirers* than Aminta; but I will venture to fay, there is a great deal of difference between the admirers of one and the other. Corisca, which is a character generally admired by the ordinary judges, is intolerable in a Paftoral; and Bonarelli's fancy of making his fhepherdess in love with two men equally,

is

* Taffo, on seeing this Paftoral Comedy reprefented, is reported to have faid; " If Guarini had not seen my Amintas, he had not excelled it." But this was not a true judgment. La Filli di Sciro, of Bonarelli, is alfo full of unnatural characters, and of diftorted conceits. It was firft published, says Fontanini, at Ferrari, in quarto, with cuts, 1607; afterwards fplendidly at Paris, in alfo by Cramoify, 1651; and elegantly at London, in

octavo, 1728.

is not to be defended, whatever pains he has taken to do it. As for what you ask of the liberty of borrowing; it is very evident the best Latin Poets have extended this very far; and none fo far as Virgil, who was the best of them. As for the Greek Poets, if we cannot trace them fo plainly, it is perhaps because we have none before them; it is evident that most of them borrowed from Homer, and Homer has been acccused of burning those that wrote before him, that his thefts might not be discovered. The best of the modern Poets in all languages are thofe that have the nearest copied the Ancients*. Indeed, in all the common fubjects of Poetry, the thoughts are fo obvious, (at least if they are natural,) that whoever writes laft, muft write things like what have been faid beforet: But they may as well applaud

the

*The fuperiority of ancient writers over the modern, may perhaps not unjustly be ascribed, to a genial climate, that gave fuch a happy temperament of body as was most proper to produce fine fenfations; to a language most harmonious, copious, clear, and forcible; to the many public encouragements and honours bestowed on the cultivators of literature; to the emulation excited among the generous youth, by exhibitions of their various performances at the folemn games; to the freedom of their governments; to an inattention to the arts of lucre and commerce, which totally engrofs and debase the minds of the moderns; and above all, to an exemption from the neceffity of overloading their natural faculties with learning and languages, with which we in these later times are obliged to qualify ourselves for writers, if we expect to

be read.

+ This fubject has been difcuffed at much length, and with much acuteness and ingenuity, by Dr. Hurd, in the Discourse on Poetical Imitation: in which the difficulty of diftinguishing RESEMBLANCES from THEFTS, is endeavoured to be pointed out.

the Ancients for the arts of eating and drinking, and accuse the Moderns of having ftolen those inventions: from them; it being evident in all fuch cafes, that whoever lived first, muft first find them out. It is true, indeed, when

unus et alter

Affuitur pannus,

when there are one or two bright thoughts ftolen, and all the reft is quite different from it, a poem makes a very foolish figure: But when it is all melted down together, and the gold of the Ancients fo mixed with that of the Moderns, that none can distinguish the one from the other, I can never find fault with it. I cannot however but own to you, that there are others of a different opinion, and that I have fhewn your verses to fome who have made that objection to them. I have fo much company round me while I write this, and fuch a noife in my ears, that it is impoffible I should write any thing but nonsense, fo must break off abruptly. I am, Sir,

Your most affectionate,

and moft humble Servant.

LETTER V.

FROM MR. WALSH.

Sept. 9, 1766.

A my return from the North I received the favour of your letter, which had lain there till then. Having been abfent about fix weeks, I read over your Paftorals again, with a great deal of pleasure, and to judge the better read Virgil's Eclogues, and Spenfer's Calendar, at the fame time; and, I affure you, I continue the fame opinion I had always of them. By the little hints you take upon all occafions to improve them, it is probable you will make them yet better against winter; though there is a mean to be kept even in that too, and a man may correct his verses till he takes away the true spirit of them; especially if he submits to the correction of fome who pass for great Critics, by mechanical rules, and never enter into the true design and Genius of an author. I have seen some of these that would hardly allow any one good Ode in Horace, who cry Virgil wants fancy, and that Homer is very incorrect. While they talk at this rate, one would think them above the common rate of mortals: But generally they are great admirers of Ovid and Lucan; and when they write themselves, we find out all the mystery. They fcan

their verses upon their fingers; run after Conceits and glaring thoughts: Their poems are all made up of Couplets *, of which the first may be the last, or the last first, without any fort of prejudice to their works; in which there is no defign, or method, or any thing natural or juft. For you are certainly in the right, that in all writings whatsoever (not poetry only) nature is to be followed; and we fhould be jealous of ourselves for being fond of Similies, Conceits, and what they call faying fine Things. When we were in the North, my Lord Wharton fhewed me a letter he had received from a certain great General in Spain; I told him I would by all means † have that General recalled and fet to writing here at home, for it was impoffible that a man with so much Wit as he fhewed, could be fit to command an Army, or do any other business. As for what you fay of Expreffion: It is indeed the fame thing to Wit, as Dress is to Beauty: I have seen many women overdreffed, and several look better in a careless nightgown, with their hair about their ears, than Mademoiselle

* The most usual and common blemish of all modern English poetry; and in great measure occafioned, and almost unavoidably,, by the nature and use of rhyme.

• The Earl of Peterborow.

† It is maxim, fays Hume, propagated by the dunces of all countries, that a man of genius is unfit for business.

f Mr. Walsh's remark will be thought very innocent, when the reader is informed that it was made on the Earl of Peterborow, juft before the glorious campaigns of Barcelona and Valentia.

. P.