But to let fall the Allusion, notwithstanding your Criticisms, and particularly the Candour which you have discovered in them, are not the least taking Part of your Works, I find your Opinion concerning Poetical Justice, as it is expressed in the first Part of your Fortieth Spectator, is controverted by some eminent Criticks; and as you now seem, to our great Grief of Heart, to be winding up your Bottoms, I hoped you would have enlarged a little upon that Subject.  It is indeed but a single Paragraph in your Works, and I believe those who have read it with the same Attention I have done, will think there is nothing to be objected against it.  I have however drawn up some additional Arguments to strengthen the Opinion which you have there delivered, having endeavoured to go to the Bottom of that Matter, which you may either publish or suppress as you think fit.

’Horace in my Motto says, that all Men are vicious, and that they differ from one another, only as they are more or less so. Boileau has given the same Account of our Wisdom, as Horace has of our Virtue.

    ’Tous les homines sont fous, et, malgre tous leurs soins,
    Ne different entre eux, que du plus et du moins.’

  All Men, says he, are Fools, and, in spite of their Endeavours to the
  contrary, differ from one another only as they are more or less so.

  ’Two or three of the old Greek Poets have given the same turn to a
  Sentence which describes the Happiness of Man in this Life;

    [Greek:  To zaen alypos, andros esti eutuchous]

  ’That Man is most happy who is the least miserable.

  ’It will not perhaps be unentertaining to the Polite Reader to observe
  how these three beautiful Sentences are formed upon different Subjects
  by the same way of thinking; but I shall return to the first of them.

’Our Goodness being of a comparative, and not an absolute nature, there is none who in strictness can be called a Virtuous Man.  Every one has in him a natural Alloy, tho’ one may be fuller of Dross than another:  For this reason I cannot think it right to introduce a perfect or a faultless Man upon the Stage; not only because such a Character is improper to move Compassion, but because there is no such a thing in Nature.  This might probably be one Reason why the SPECTATOR in one of his Papers took notice of that late invented Term called Poetical Justice, and the wrong Notions into which it has led some Tragick Writers.  The most perfect Man has Vices enough to draw down Punishments upon his Head, and to justify Providence in regard to any Miseries that may befal him.  For this reason I cannot think, but that the Instruction and Moral are much finer, where a Man who is virtuous in the main of his Character falls into Distress, and sinks under the Blows of Fortune at the End of a Tragedy, than when he is represented as Happy