In proportion as perfection is more diftinctly conceived, the pleasure of contemplating our own performances will be leffened; it may therefore be observed, that they who moft deserve praise, are often afraid to decide in favour of their own performances; they know how much is still wanting to their completion, and wait with anxiety and terror, the determination of the public.I pleafe every one elfe, fays Tully, but never fatisfy myself.

It has often been enquired, why, notwithstanding the advances of latter ages in fcience, and the affiftance which the infufion of fo many new ideas has given us, we ftill fall below the ancients in the art of compofition.

Some part of their fuperiority may be justly afcribed to the graces of their language, from which the most polished of the present EUROPEAN tongues are nothing more than barbarous dege nerations. Some advantage they might gain merely by priority, which put them in poffeffion of the most natural fentiments, and left us nothing but servile répetition or forced conceits. But the greater part of their praise seems to have been the just reward of modesty and labour. Their fenfe of human weakness confined them com

monly to one study, which their knowledge of the extent of every science engaged them to profecute with indefatigable diligence.

Among the writers of antiquity I remember none except Statius who ventures to mention the speedy productions of his writings, either as an extenuation of his faults, or a proof of his facility. Nor did Statius, when he confidered as a candidate for lafting reputation, think a closer attention unneceffary, but amidst all his pride and indigence, the two great hafteners of modern poems, employed twelve years upon the Thebaid, and thinks his claims to renown proportionate to his labour.

Thebais, multa cruciata lima,
Tentat, audaci fide, Mantuana
Gaudia fama.

Polifh'd with endless toil, my lays
At length afpire to Mantuan praife.

Ovid indeed apologizes in his banishment for the imperfection of his letters, but mentions his want of leifure to polish them as an addition to his calamities; and was fo far from imagining revifals and corrections unneceffary, that at his departure from Rome he threw his Metamorphofes

into the fire, left he fhould be difgraced by a book which he could not hope to finish.

It seems not often to have happened that the fame writer aspired to reputation in verse and profe; and of thofe few that attempted fuch a diversity of excellence, I know not that even one fucceeded. Contrary characters they never imagined a fingle mind able to fupport, and therefore no man is recorded to have undertaken more than one kind of dramatick poetry.

What they had written they did not venture in their first fondness to thrust into the world, but confidering the impropriety of fending forth inconfiderately that which cannot be recalled, deferred the publication, if not nine years, according to the direction of Horace, yet till their fancy was cooled after the raptures of invention, and the glare of novelty had ceased to dazzle the judgment.

There were in those days no weekly or diurnal writers; multa dies, & multa litura, much time, and many rafures, were confidered as indifpenfable requifites; and that no other method of attaining lafting praise has been yet difcovered, may be conjectured from the blotted manuscripts

of Milton now remaining, and from the tardy emiffion of Pope's compofitions, delayed more than once till the incidents to which they alluded were forgotten, till his enemies were fecure from his fatire, and, what to an honeft mind must be more painful, his friends were deaf to his encomiums.

To him, whofe eagerness of praise hurries his productions foon into the light, many imperfections are unavoidable, even where the mind furnishes the materials, as well as regulates their difpofitions, and nothing depends upon fearch or informations. Delay opens new veins of thought; the fubject difmiffed for a time, appears with a new train of dependant images; the accidents of reading or converfation fupply new ornaments or allufions, or mere intermiffion of the fatigue of thinking, enables the mind to collect new force, and make new excurfions.

But all thofe benefits come too late for him, who, when he was weary with labour, fnatched at the recompence, and gave his work to his friends and his enemies, as foon as impatience and pride perfuaded him to concluded it.

One

One of the most pernicious effects of hafte is obfcurity. He that teems with a quick fucceffion of ideas, and perceives how one fentiment produces another, eafily believes that he can clearly express what he so strongly comprehends; he feldom fufpects his thoughts of embarrassment, while he preferves in his own memory the series of connection, or his diction of ambiguity, while only one fenfe is present to his mind. Yet if he has been employed on an abstruse or complicated argument, he will find, when he has awhile withdrawn his mind, and returns as a new reader to his work, that he has only a conjectural glimpse of his own meaning, and that to explain it to those whom he defires to inftruct, he must open his fentiments, difentangle his method, and alter his arrangement.

Authors and lovers always fuffer fome infatuation, from which only abfence can set them free, and every man ought to restore himself to the full exercise of his judgment, before he does that which he cannot do improperly, without injuring his honour and his quiet.

AN