«boul, &c." You have a world more of DIAL, this fort of eloquence in that rambling II. Stoick. His Style is like his Religion, made up of starts of fancy, libertinifm of incoherent notions, indigefted words and ideas. How much better do those write, who, tempering the heat of fancy with cool reflections upon the rules of art, go smoothly on to their point.

CLEAND. It is doubtless better, as long as too much of art does not destroy nature. Waters are never fo good as from the very fpring, and we are more pleased with a fountain rifing in the midst of its native pebbles, and artless greens, than when it rattles down into a marble bason. I am for Juvenal's"

Quanto præftantius effet Numen aqua viridi fi margine clauderet

undas

Herba, nec ingenuum vitiarent marmora tophum.

And thus, is there not fomething more pleafing in a free natural vein, than in a conftrain'd artificial Style?

EUDOX. But if you obferve narrowly, you will find none depart more from na

DIAL. ture, than those who take the liberties I II. fpeak of. Or, if you will have me answer with the words of the fame Author, I will affirm, that nature and wisdom, or art, never give oppofite rules.

O

Nunquam aliud natura, aliud fapientia

dicit.

And then it will be found, that as waters often grow clearer and better by their courfe; fo natural methods of writing improve through a courfe of Rules.

CRITOM. I am not an enemy to either nature or art. I only fear the criticks will have Authors fo nice, as to smooth their Styles into meer flatness. A roughness is better than to have things polished till they are too thin and weak. Amongst the many Jupiters of antiquity (and you know Varro will not compute for less than three hundred) one was Jupiter Philius, or of friendfhip, and was commonly made with a rough philofophical head. Perhaps, fays my Antiquary, because friendship is oftner found among them, than among fprucer fellows. Thus, methinks, Authors of a rougher mien, are oftner found truer to reason than your trimm'd and fmooth-faced Styles.

EUDOX. Yet you are not to omit obferving, that the very Jupiter you speak of, join'd a fmiling countenance with his rugged head. From whence I may infer, in the like method, that a true reasonable writer, must not have a frowning look, and that if he must not be gimp, yet he must not be horrid. And if you love Mytholo gical applications, I will mind you of the ftrife between Neptune and Minerva, which of the two fhou'd give the name to Athens, which they jointly built. It was in fine agreed, the name fhou'd be given by the party that fhou'd beftow the better gift upon the new city. Whereupon Neptune ftrikes the earth, and up starts a horfe for war. Minerva raised an olive-tree. was judged the better gift, and the town was call'd by her name. Here a thoroughpaced Mythologift wou'd, I believe, affure you it was to fignify, befides many other things, that the fmoothness of oil is a better emblem of eloquence (whereof Athens was to be the feat) than all the fprightliness of a prancing, foaming horse.

This

CLEAND. But hold, Sir, I fuppofe, no farther ftrefs is put upon that kind of Allegory, than to give your thought and our difcourfe, a little variety. For thofe Allegories are very pliable things, and a Mythologift of a different temper, or the same in

a

DIAL.

II.