invented by Menander, has produced the comedy, properly so called in our times.  This is that which has for its subject general pictures of common life, and feigned names and adventures, whether of the court or of the city.  This third kind is incontestably the most noble, and has received the strongest sanction from custom.  It is, likewise, the most difficult to perform, because it is merely the work of invention, in which the poet has no help from real passages or persons, which the tragick poet always makes use of.  Who knows but, by deep thinking, another kind of comedy may be invented, wholly different from the three which I have mentioned? such is the fruitfulness of comedy.  But its course is already too wide for the discovery of new fields to be wished; and on ground where we are already so apt to stumble, nothing is so dangerous as novelty imperfectly understood.  This is the rock on which men have often split, in every kind of pursuit; to go no further, in that of grammar and language, it is better to endeavour after novelty, in the manner of expressing common things, than to hunt for ideas out of the way, in which many a man loses himself.  The ill success of that odd composition, tragick comedy, a monster wholly unknown to antiquity,[33] sufficiently shows the danger of novelty in attempts like these.

 15.  WHETHER TRAGEDY OR COMEDY BE THE HARDER TO WRITE[34].

To finish the parallel of the two dramas, a question may be revived equally common and important, which has been oftener proposed than well decided:  it is, whether comedy or tragedy be most easy or difficult to be well executed.  I shall not have the temerity to determine, positively, a question which so many great geniuses have been afraid to decide; but, if it be allowed to every literary man to give his reason for and against a mere work of genius, considered without respect to its good or bad tendency, I shall, in a few words, give my opinion, drawn from the nature of the two works, and the qualifications they demand.  Horace[35] proposes a question nearly of the same kind:  “It has been inquired, whether a good poem be the work of art or nature? for my part, I do not see much to be done by art without genius, nor by genius without knowledge.  The one is necessary to the other, and the success depends upon their cooperation.”  If we should endeavour to accommodate matters in imitation of this decision of Horace, it were easy to say, at once, that supposing two geniuses equal, one tragick and the other comick, supposing the art, likewise, equal in each, one would be as easy or difficult as the other; but this, though satisfactory in the simple question put by Horace, will not be sufficient here.  Nobody can doubt but genius and industry contribute their part to every thing valuable, and particularly to good poetry.  But if genius and study were to be weighed one against the other, in order to discover which must contribute most to a good work, the question