to extenuate my failings, but by showing as great in those whom we admire:

Cadimus, inque vicem præbemus crura sagittis.

I cast my eyes but by chance on Catiline; and in the three or four last pages, found enough to conclude that Jonson writ not correctly.

-Let the long-hid seeds

Of treason, in thee, now shoot forth in deeds
Ranker than horror.

In reading some bombast speeches of Macbeth, which are not to be understood, he used to say that it was horror; and I am much afraid that this is

Thy parricide late on thy only son,

After his mother, to make empty way

For thy last wicked nuptials, worse than they
That blaze that act of thy incestuous life,

Which gained thee at once a daughter and a wife.

The sense is here extremely perplexed; and I doubt the word they is false grammar.

And be free

Not heaven itself from thy impiety.

A synchysis, or ill-placing of words, of which Tully so much complains in oratory.

The waves and dens of beasts could not receive

The bodies that those souls were frighted from.

The preposition in the end of the sentence; a common fault with him, and which I have but lately observed in my own writings.

What all the several ills that visit earth,
Plague, famine, fire, could not reach unto,
The sword, nor surfeits, let thy fury do.

Here are both the former faults: for, besides that the preposition unto is placed last in the verse, and at the half period, and is redundant, there is the former synchysis in the words "the sword, nor surfeits," which in construction ought to have been placed before the other.

Catiline says of Cethegus, that for his sake he would

Go on upon the gods, kiss lightning, wrest
The engine from the Cyclops, and give fire·
At face of a full cloud, and stand his ire.

To" go on upon," is only to go on twice*. To give fire at face of a full cloud," was not understood in his own time; "and stand his ire," besides the antiquated word ire, there is the article his, which makes false construction: and giving fire at the face of a cloud, is a perfect image of shooting, however it came to be known in those days to Catiline.

-Others there are,

Whom envy to the state draws and pulls on,

For contumelies received; and such are sure ones.

Ones, in the plural number: but that is frequent with him; for he says, not long after,

Cæsar and Crassus, if they be ill men,

Are mighty ones.

Such men, they do not succour more the cause, &c.

They redundant.

Though heaven should speak with all his wrath at once,
We should stand upright and unfeared.

† Jonson seems to have used it for to go on against.

His is ill syntax with heaven; and by unfeared he means unafraid: Words of a quite contrary signification.

"The ports are open." He perpetually uses ports for gates; which is an affected error in him, to introduce Latin by the loss of the English idiom; as, in the translation of Tully's speeches, he usually does.

Well-placing of words, for the sweetness of pronunciation, was not known till Mr Waller introduced it; and, therefore, it is not to be wondered if Ben Jonson has many such lines as these:

"But being bred up in his father's needy fortunes; brought up in's sister's prostitution," &c.

But meanness of expression one would think not to be his error in a tragedy, which ought to be more high and sounding than any other kind of poetry; and yet, amongst others in "Catiline," I find these four lines together:

So Asia, thou art cruelly even

With us, for all the blows thee given;

When we, whose virtues conquered thee,
Thus by thy vices ruined be.

Be there is false English for are; though the rhyme hides it.

But I am willing to close the book, partly out of veneration to the author, partly out of weariness to pursue an argument which is so fruitful in so small a compass. And what correctness, after this, can be expected from Shakespeare or from Fletcher, who wanted that learning and care which Jonson had? I will, therefore, spare my own trouble of enquiring into their faults; who, had they lived now, had doubtless written more correctly. I suppose it will be enough for me to affirm, (as I think I safely may) that these, and the like errors, which I taxed in the

most correct of the last age, are such into which we do not ordinarily fall. I think few of our present writers would have left behind them such a line as this:

Contain your spirit in more stricter bounds.

But that gross way of two comparatives was then ordinary; and, therefore, more pardonable in Jon

son.

As for the other part of refining, which consists in receiving new words and phrases, I shall not insist much on it. It is obvious that we have admitted many, some of which we wanted, and therefore our language is the richer for them, as it would be by importation of bullion: Others are rather ornamental than necessary; yet, by their admission, the language is become more courtly, and our thoughts are better drest. These are to be found scattered in the writers of our age, and it is not my business to collect them. They, who have lately written with most care, have, I believe, taken the rule of Horace for their guide; that is, not to be too hasty in receiving of words, but rather stay till custom has made them familiar to us:

Quem penes arbitrium est, et jus, et norma loquendi.

For I cannot approve of their way of refining, who corrupt our English idiom by mixing it too much with French: That is a sophistication of language, not an improvement of it; a turning English into French, rather than a refining of English by French. We meet daily with those fops, who value themselves on their travelling, and pretend they cannot express their meaning in English, because they would put off to us some French phrase of the last edition; without considering, that, for aught they know, we have a better of our own.

But these are not the men who are to refine us; their talent is to prescribe fashions, not words: at best, they are only serviceable to a writer, so as Ennius was to Virgil. He may aurum ex stercore colligere: For it is hard if, amongst many insignificant phrases, there happen not something worth preserving; though they themselves, like Indians, know not the value of their own commodity.

There is yet another way of improving language, which poets especially have practised in all ages; that is, by applying received words to a new signification; and this, I believe, is meant by Horace, in that precept which is so variously construed by expositors:

Dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum
Reddiderit junctura novum.

And, in this way, he himself had a particular happiness; using all the tropes, and particular metaphors, with that grace which is observable in his Odes, where the beauty of expression is often greater than that of thought; as, in that one example, amongst an infinite number of others, "Et vultus nimium lubricus aspici."

And therefore, though he innovated a little, he may justly be called a great refiner of the Roman tongue. This choice of words, and heightening of their natural signification, was observed in him by the writers of the following ages; for Petronius says of him," Et Horatii curiosa felicitas." By this graffing, as I may call it, on old words, has our tongue been beautified by the three before-mentioned poets, Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Jonson, whose excellencies I can never enough admire; and in this they have been followed, especially by Sir John Suckling and Mr Waller, who refined upon them, Neither have they, who succeeded them, been want