*

Thus I have daubed him with his own puddle. And now we are come from aboard his dancing, masquing, rebounding, breathing fleet; and as if we had landed at Gotham, we meet nothing but fools and nonsense."

Order and harmony in each appear,

Their lofty bulks the flaming billows bear;
In state they move, and on the waves rebound,
As if they danced to their own trumpets' sound:
By winds inspired, with lively grace they roll,
As if that breath and motion lent a soul;
And with that soul they seem taught duty too,
Their topsails lower'd, their heads with reverence bow,
As if they would their general's worth enhance,
From him by instinct taught allegiance.
Whilst the loud cannons echo to the shore,
Their flaming breaths salute you emperor;
From their deep mouths he does your glory sing,
With thunder and with lightning greets his King.
Thus to express his joys, in a loud choir,

And concert of winged messengers of fire,

He has his tribute sent, and homage given,
As men in incense send up vows to heaven.

"Such (says Dr. Johnson) was the criticism to which the genius of Dryden could be reduced between rage and terrour; rage with little provocation, and terrour with little danger. To see the brightest minds thus levelled with the meanest, may produce some solace to the consciousness of weakness, and some mortification to the pride of wisdom. But let it be remembered, that minds are not levelled in their powers but when they are first levelled in their desires. Dryden and Settle had both placed their happiness in the claps of multitudes."

Some who are pleased with the bare sound of verse, or the rumbling of robustious nonsense, will be apt to think Mr. Settle too severely handled in this pamphlet ; but I do assure the reader, that there are a vast number of errours passed by, perhaps as many or more than are taken notice of, both to avoid the tediousness of the work and the greatness. It might have occasioned a volume upon such a trifle. I dare affirm that no objections in this book are fruitless cavils: but if through too much haste Mr. Settle may be accused of any seeming fault, which may reasonably be defended, let the passing by many gross errours without reprehension compound for it. I am not ignorant that his admirers, who most commonly are women, will resent this very ill; and some little friends of his, who are smatterers in poetry, will be ready for most of his gross errours to use that much mistaken plea of poetica licentia, which words fools are apt to use for the palliating the most absurd nonsense in any poem. I cannot find when poets had liberty from any authority to write nonsense, more than any other men. Nor is that plea of poetica licentia used as a subterfuge by any but weak professors of that art, who are commonly given over to a mist of fancy, a buzzing of invention, and a sound of something like sense, and

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have no use of judgment. They never think thoroughly, but the best of their thoughts are like those we have in dreams, imperfect; which, though perhaps we are often pleased with, sleeping, we blush at, waking. The licentious wildness and extravagance of such men's conceits have made poetry contemned by some, though it be very unjust for any to condemn the science for the weakness of some of the professors.

Men that are given over to fancy only, are little better than madmen. What people say of fire, viz. that it is a good servant, but an ill master, may not unaptly be applied to fancy; which, when it is too active, rages, but when cooled and allayed by the judgment, produces admirable effects. But this rage of fancy is never Mr. Settle's crime; he has too much phlegm, and too little choler, to be accused of this. He has all the pangs and throes of a fanciful poet, but is never delivered of any more perfect issue of his phlegmatick brain, than a dull Dutchwoman's sooterkin is of her body.'

His style is very muddy, and yet much laboured; for his meaning (for sense there is not much,) is most commonly obscure, but never by reason of too much height, but lowness. His fancy never flies out of sight, but often sinks out of sight:

Pope was so diligent a reader of every thing ascribed to Dryden, that it is probable this passage produced the following couplet in the DUNCIAD:

"All that on folly frenzy could beget,

"Fruits of dull heat, and sooterkins of wit."

---but now I hope the reader will excuse some digression upon the extravagant use of fancy and poetical licence.

Fanciful poetry and musick, used with moderation, are good; but men who are wholly given over to either of them, are commonly as full of whimsies as diseased and splenetick men can be. Their heads are continually hot, and they have the same elevation of fancy sober, which men of sense have when they drink. So wine used moderately does not take away the judgment, but used continually, debauches men's understandings, and turns them into sots, making their heads continually hot by accident, as the others are by nature; so mere poets and inere musicians are as sottish as mere drunkards are, who live in a continual mist, without seeing or judging any thing clearly.

A man should be learned in several sciences, and should have a reasonable, philosophical, and in some measure a mathematical head, to be a complete and excellent poet'; and besides this, should have experience in all sorts of humours and manners of men; should be thoroughly skilled in conversation, and should have a great knowledge of mankind in general. Mr. Settle having never studied any sort of learning but poetry, and that but slenderly, as you may find by his writings, and having besides no other advantages, must make very lame work on't; he himself declares he neither reads, nor cares for conversation, so that

he would persuade us he is a kind of fanatick in poetry, and has a light within him, and writes by an inspiration; which (like that of the heathen prophets) a man must have no sense of his own when he receives; and no doubt he would be thought inspired, and would be reverenced extremely in the country where Santons are worshipped. But some will I doubt not object, that poetry should not be reduced to the strictness of mathematicks; to which I answer, it ought to be so far mathematical as to have likeness and pro portion, since they will all confess that it is a kind of painting. But they will perhaps say, that a poem is a picture to be seen at a distance, and therefore ought to be bigger than the life. I confess there must be a due distance allowed for the seeing of any thing in the world; for an object can no more

a Santons are asceticks, or hermits, much venerated in the East for their piety and seclusion from the world.The story of Santon Barsisa, taken from the Turkish Tales, is very happily related in the GUARDIAN, N° 148, and has lately been expanded into a popular novel of a very different cast, which has been very generally censured for its immoral tendency.

Knavish half-naked vagabonds, pretending to sanctity, and natural fools, are also sometimes accounted and deno. minated Santons, or Santos, in Egypt; and the latter doubtless are the Santons here alluded to. Pococke in his DESCRIPTION OF THE EAST, (vol. i. p. 193.) says, that "the Mahometans have a certain veneration for fools and mad people, as thinking them actuated by a divine spirit, and look on them as a sort of saints."