To rail men into approbation

Is new to your's alone;

And prospers not: for know,

Fame is as coy, as you

Can be disdainful; and who dares to prove
A rape on her shall gather scorn,—not love.

"Leave then this humour vain,

And this more humorous strain,

Where self-conceit, and choler of the blood,
Eclipse what else is good:

Then if you please those raptures high to touch,
Whereof you boast so much :

And but forbear your crown

Till the world puts it on:

No doubt, from all you may amazement draw,
Since braver theme no Phoebus ever saw."

To console dejected Ben for this just reprimand, Randolph, one of the adopted poetical sons of Jonson, addressed him with all that warmth of grateful affection which a man of genius should have felt on the occasion.

"An Answer to Mr. Ben Jonson's ODE, to persuade him not to leave the Stage.

I:

"Ben, do not leave the stage

'Cause 'tis a loathsome age;

For pride and impudence will grow too bold,

When they shall hear it told

They frighted thee: Stand high as is thy cause,

Their hiss is thy applause :
More just were thy disdain,

Had they approv'd thy vein :

So thou for them, and they for thee were born;
They to incense, and thou as much to scorn.

II.

"Will't thou engross thy store

Of wheat, and pour no more,

Because their bacon-brains have such a taste
As more delight in mast:

No! set them forth a board of dainties, full
As thy best muse can cull;
Whilst they the while do pine

And thirst, midst all their wine.

What greater plague can hell itself devise,
Than to be willing thus to tantalize!

III.

"Thou canst not find them stuff,

That will be bad enough

To please their pallates: let 'em them refuse,
For some pye-corner muse;

She is too fair an hostess, 'twere a sin

For them to like thine Inn:

'T was made to entertain

Guests of a nobler strain,

Yet if they will have any of the store,

Give them some scraps, and send them from thy dore.

IV.

"And let those things in plush

Till they be taught to blush,

Like, what they will, and more contented be
With what Broom * swept from thee.

I know thy worth, and that thy lofty strains
Write not to cloaths, but brains:

But thy great spleen doth rise,

'Cause moles will have no eyes:

This only in my Ben I faulty find,

He's angry, they'll not see him, that are blind.

V.

"Why shou'd the scene be mute

'Cause thou canst touch thy lute

And string thy Horace? Let each muse of nine
Claim thee, and say, th' art mine.

'T were fond, to let all other flames expire,
To sit by Pindar's fire:

For by so strange neglect

I should myself suspect

Thy palsiet, were as well thy brain's disease,
If they could shake thy muse which way they please.

VI.

"And tho' thou well canst sing

The glories of thy king,

And on the wings of verse his chariot bear
To heaven and fix it there;

Yet let thy muse as well some raptures raise,
To please him, as to praise.

* His man, Richard Broome, wrote with success several comedies. He had been the amanuensis or attendant of Jonson.

The epigram made appears to have been

against Pope for the assistance W. Broome gave him,
borrowed from this pun. Johnson has inserted it in "Broome's Life.”
+ He had the palsy at that time.

I would not have thee chuse

Only a treble muse;

But have this envious, ignorant age to know,
Thou that canst sing so high, canst reach as low."

ARIOSTO AND TASSo.

I CONCEIVE the first to display an original, an extravagant, but a delightful genius: the other a regular, classical, and beautiful taste;-but it surprises one to find among the literary Italians his merits most keenly disputed: slaves to classical authority they bend down to the majestic regularity of Tasso. Yet the father of Tasso, before his son had rivalled the romantic Ariosto, describes in a letter the effects of the "Orlando" on the

people :- "There is no man of learning, no mechanic, no lad, no girl, no old man, who are satisfied to read the " Orlando Furioso" once. This poem serves as the solace of the traveller, who fatigued in his travels, deceives his lassitude by chaunting some octaves of this poem. You may hear them sing these stanzas in the streets and in the fields every day, and by every one!" One would have expected that Ariosto would have been the favourite of the people, and Tasso, of the critics. I am assured by a native, that in Venice it is very common to hear the gondoliers, and others sing passages which are generally taken from Tasso, and rarely from Ariosto. A different

fate I imagined would have attended the poet, who has been distinguished by the epithet of "The Divine." I have been told by an Italian man of letters, that this circumstance arises from the relation which Tasso's poem bears to Turkish affairs; as many of the common people have passed into Turkey, either through chance or War. Besides that the long antipathy existing between the Venetians and the Turks, gives additional force to the patriotic poetry of Tasso. We cannot boast of any similar poems. Thus it was that the people of Greece and Ionia sung the poems of Homer.

The Academia della Crusca gave a public preference to Ariosto. This, as was natural to suppose, irritated certain critics, and none more than Chapelain, who could taste the regularity of Tasso, but not feel the "brave disorder" of Ariosto. He could not approve of those writers,

"Who snatch a Grace beyond the reach of Art."

On this occasion he writes to a friend, "I thank you for the sonnet which your indignation dictated, at the Academy's preference of Ariosto to Tasso. This judgment is overthrown by the confessions of many of the Cruscanti, my associates. It would be tedious to enter into its discussion; but it was passion and not equity that prompted that decision. We confess that as to what concerns