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Plate II

Vol.I facing pa. 89.

He stood convincd twas fit.
Nature should,
d preside ver Wit.

Who conquerd

Essay on Crit.

AN

ESSAY

ΟΝ

CRITICISM.

'TIS

IS hard to fay, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill;

But of the two, lefs dang'rous is th' offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our fenfe.

COMMENTARY.

An Eay.] The Poem is in one book, but divided into three principal parts or members. The first [to ver. 2013 gives rules for the Study of the Art of Criticism: the fecond [from thence to ver. 560.] expofes the Caufes of wrong Judgment; and the third [from thence to the end] marks out the Morals of the Critic.

In order to a right conception of this poem, it will be neceffary to obferve, that tho' it be intitled fimply An Effay on Criticism, yet feveral of the precepts relate equally to the good writing as well as to the true judging of a poem. This is fo far from violating the Unity of the Subject, that it preferves and completes it: or from difordering the regularity of the Form, that it adds beauty to it, as will appear by the following confiderations: 1. It was impoffible to give a full and exact idea of the Art of Poetical Criticifm, without confidering at the fame time the Art of Po

Some few in that, but numbers err in this,
Ten cenfure wrong for one who writes amifs;
A fool might once himself alone expose,
Now one in verfe makes many more in profe.

'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go juft alike, yet each believes his own.

COMMENTARY.

5

10

etry; fo far as Poetry is an Art. These therefore being clofely connected in nature, the Author has, with much judgment, interwoven the precepts of each reciprocally thro' his whole poem.

2. As the rules of the antient Critics were taken from Poets who copied nature, this is another reason why every Poet fhould be a Critic: Therefore, as the fubject is poetical Criticism, it is frequently addreffed to the critical Poet. And 3dly, the Art of Criticifm is as properly, and much more usefully exercised in writing than in judging.

But readers have been mifled by the modefty of the Title, which only promises an Art of Criticifm, to expect little, where they will find a great deal; a treatise, and that no incomplete one, of the Art both of Criticifm and Poetry. This, and not the attending to the confiderations offered above, was what, perhaps, misled a very candid writer, after having given this Piece all the praifes on the fide of genius and poetry which his true taste could not refuse it, to fay, that the obfervations follow one another like thofe in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been requifite in a profe writer. Spec. No 235. I do not fee how method can hurt any one grace of Poetry; or what prerogative there is in Verfe to dispense with regularity. The remark is false in every part of it. Mr. Pope's Efay on Criticism, the Reader will foon fee, is a regular piece: And a very learned Critic has lately fhewn, that Horace had the fame attention to method in his Art of Poetry. See Mr. H---'s comment and the Epifle to the Pifos.

VER. 1. 'Tis hard to fay, etc.] The Poem opens [from ver. 1 to 9.] with fhewing the use and seasonableness of the fubject. Its ufe, from the greater mifchief in wrong Criticism than in ill Poetry, this only tiring, that miflead

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