but then those thoughts must be expressed; and here arise two other branches of it; for if this licence be included in a single word, it admits of tropes; if in a sentence or proposition, of figures; both which are of a much larger extent, and more forcibly to be used in verse than prose.  This is that birth-right which is derived to us from our great forefathers, even from Homer down to Ben; and they, who would deny it to us, have, in plain terms, the fox’s quarrel to the grapes—­they cannot reach it.

How far these liberties are to be extended, I will not presume to determine here, since Horace does not.  But it is certain that they are to be varied, according to the language and age in which an author writes.  That which would be allowed to a Grecian poet, Martial tells you, would not be suffered in a Roman; and it is evident, that the English does more nearly follow the strictness of the latter, than the freedoms of the former.  Connection of epithets, or the conjunction of two words in one, are frequent and elegant in the Greek, which yet Sir Philip Sidney, and the translator of Du Bartas, have unluckily attempted in the English; though this, I confess, is not so proper an instance of poetic licence, as it is of variety of idiom in languages.

Horace a little explains himself on this subject of Licentia Poetica, in these verses: 

_—­Pictoribus atque Poetis Quidlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas:  ...  Sed non, ut placidis coeant immitia, non ut Serpentes avibus geminentur, tigribus haedi._

He would have a poem of a piece; not to begin with one thing, and end with another:  He restrains it so far, that thoughts of an unlike nature ought not to be joined together.  That were indeed to make a chaos.  He taxed not Homer, nor the divine Virgil, for interesting their gods in the wars of Troy and Italy; neither, had he now lived, would he have taxed Milton, as our false critics have presumed to do, for his choice of a supernatural argument; but he would have blamed my author, who was a Christian, had he introduced into his poem heathen deities, as Tasso is condemned by Rapin on the like occasion; and as Camoens, the author of the “Lusiads,” ought to be censured by all his readers, when he brings in Bacchus and Christ into the same adventure of his fable.

From that which has been said, it may be collected, that the definition of wit (which has been so often attempted, and ever unsuccessfully by many poets,) is only this:  That it is a propriety of thoughts and words; or, in other terms, thoughts and words elegantly adapted to the subject.  If our critics will join issue on this definition, that we may convenire in aliquo tertio; if they will take it as a granted principle, it will be easy to put an end to this dispute.  No man will disagree from another’s judgment concerning the dignity of style in heroic poetry; but all reasonable men will conclude it necessary, that sublime subjects ought to be adorned with the sublimest, and consequently often, with the most figurative expressions.  In the mean time I will not run into their fault of imposing my opinions on other men, any more than I would my writings on their taste:  I have only laid down, and that superficially enough, my present thoughts; and shall be glad to be taught better by those who pretend to reform our poetry.