“He will not venture again into the civil wars of censure, ubi—­nullos habitura triumphos:”  If he had not told us he had left the muses, we might have half suspected it by that word ubi, which does not any way belong to them in that place:  the rest of the verse is indeed Lucan’s, but that ubi, I will answer for it, is his own.  Yet he has another reason for this disgust of poesy; for he says immediately after, that “the manner of plays which are now in most esteem is beyond his power to perform:”  to perform the manner of a thing, I confess, is new English to me.  “However, he condemns not the satisfaction of others, but rather their unnecessary understanding, who, like Sancho Panza’s doctor, prescribe too strictly to our appetites; for,” says he, “in the difference of tragedy and comedy, and of farce itself, there can be no determination but by the taste, nor in the manner of their composure.”

We shall see him now as great a critic as he was a poet; and the reason why he excelled so much in poetry will be evident, for it will appear to have proceeded from the exactness of his judgment.  “In the difference of tragedy, comedy, and farce itself, there can be no determination but by the taste.”  I will not quarrel with the obscurity of his phrase, though I justly might; but beg his pardon if I do not rightly understand him.  If he means that there is no essential difference betwixt comedy, tragedy, and farce, but what is only made by the people’s taste, which distinguishes one of them from the other, that is so manifest an error, that I need not lose time to contradict it.  Were there neither judge, taste, nor opinion in the world, yet they would differ in their natures; for the action, character, and language of tragedy, would still be great and high; that of comedy, lower and more familiar.  Admiration would be the delight of one, and satire of the other.

I have but briefly touched upon these things, because, whatever his words are, I can scarce imagine, that “he, who is always concerned for the true honour of reason, and would have no spurious issue fathered upon her,” should mean any thing so absurd as to affirm, “that there is no difference betwixt comedy and tragedy but what is made by the taste only;” unless he would have us understand the comedies of my lord L. where the first act should be pottages, the second fricassees, &c. and the fifth a chere entiere of women.

I rather guess he means, that betwixt one comedy or tragedy and another, there is no other difference, but what is made by the liking or disliking of the audience.  This is indeed a less error than the former, but yet it is a great one.  The liking or disliking of the people gives the play the denomination of good or bad, but does not really make or constitute it such.  To please the people ought to be the poet’s aim, because plays are made for their delight; but it does not follow that they are always pleased with good plays, or that the plays which please