CRITICAL DISSERTATIONS.

I. ON THE IDEA OF UNIVERSAL POETRY. II. ON THE PROVINCES OF DRAMATIC POETRY. III. ON POETICAL IMITATION.

IV. ON THE MARKS OF IMITATION.

VATIBVS ADDERE CALCAR,

VT STVDIO MAIORE PETANT HELICONA VIRENTEM.

HOR.

DISSERTATION I

ON

THE IDEA OF UNIVERSAL POETRY.

W

HEN we fpeak of poetry, as an art, we mean fuch a way or me thod of treating a fubject, as is found most pleafing and delightful to us. In all other kinds of literary compofition, pleasure is fubordinate to USE: in poetry only, PLEA SURE is the end, to which use itself (however it be, for certain reafons, always pretended) must submit.

This idea of the end of poetry is no novel one, but indeed the very fame which our great philofopher entertained of it; who gives it as the effential note of this part of learning — THAT IT SUBMITS THE SHEWS OF THINGS TO THE DESIRES OF THE MIND: WHEREAS REASON DOTH BUCKLE AND BOW THE MIND UNTO THE

NATURE OF THINGS. For to gratify the defires of the mind, is to PLEASE: Pleasure then, in the idea of Lord Bacon, is the ultimate and appropriate end of poetry; for the fake of which it accommodates itself to the defires of the mind, and doth not (as other kinds of writing, which are under the controul of reafon) buckle and bow the mind to the nature of things.

But they, who like a principle the better for feeing it in Greek, may take it in the words of an old philofopher, ERATOSTHENES, who affirmed winny wala τοχάζεσθαι ψυχαγωγίας, ε διδασκαλίας - of which words, the definition given above, is the tranflation.

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This notion of the end of poetry, if kept fteadily in view, will unfold to us all the myfteries of the poetic art. There needs but to evolve the philofopher's idea, and to apply it, as occafion ferves. The art of poetry will be, univerfally, THE ART OF PLEASING; and all its rules, but fo inany MEANS, which experience finds most conducive to that end;