his performances fell short of his own ideas of excellence, his enemies tried him by rules of his own establishing; and though they owed to him the ability of judging, they seldom had candour enough to spare him.

Perhaps it may be true, that Pope's works are read with more appetite, as there is a greater evenness and correctness in them; but in perusing the works of Dryden, the mind will take a wider range, and be more fraught with poetical ideas. We admire Dryden as the greater genius, and Pope as the most pleasing versifier.-Cibber's Lives.

PREFACE.

I AM inclined to think that both the writers of books, and the readers of them, are generally not a little unreasonable in their expectations. The first seem to fancy the world must approve whatever they produce, and the latter to imagine that authors are obliged to please them at any rate. Methinks, as on the one hand no single man is born with a right of controlling the opinions of all the rest, so, on the other, the world has no title to demand that the whole care and time of any particular person should be sacrificed to its entertainment: therefore I cannot but believe that writers and readers are under equal obligations, for as much fame or pleasure as each affords the other.

Every one acknowledges it would be a wild notion to expect perfection in any work of man, and yet one would think the contrary was taken for granted by the

judgment commonly passed upon poems. A critic supposes he has done his part, if he proves a writer to have failed in an expression, or erred in any par ticular point; and can it then be wondered at if the poets in general seem resolved not to own themselves in any error? for as long as one side will make no allowances, the other will be brought to no acknowledgments *.

I am afraid this extreme zeal on both sides is illplaced, poetry and criticism being by no means the universal concern of the world, but only the affair of idle men who write in their closets, and of idle men who read there.

Yet sure, upon the whole, a bad author deserves better usage than a bad critic; for a writer's endeavour, for the most part, is to please his readers, and he fails merely through the misfortune of an ill-judgment; but such a critic's is to put them out of humour; a design he could never go upon without both that and an ill-temper.

In the former editions it was thus...." For as long as one side despises a well-meant endeavour, the other will not be satisfied with a moderate approbation;"....but the author altered it, as these words were rather a consequence from the conclusion he would draw, than the conclusion itself, which he has now inserted.

I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the faults of bad poets. What we call a genius is hard to be distinguished by a man himself from a strong inclination; and if his genius be ever so great, he cannot at first discover it any other way, than by giving way to that prevalent propensity which renders him the more liable to be mistaken. The only method he has is to make the experiment by writing, and appealing to the judgment of others. Now, if he happens to write ill, which is certainly no sin in itself, he is immediately made an object of ridicule. I wish we had the humanity to reflect, that even the worst authors might, in their endeavour to please us, deserve something at our hands. We have no cause to quarrel with them but for their obstinacy in persisting to write; and this, too, may admit of alleviating circumstances. Their particular friends may be either ignorant or insincere; and the rest of the world in general is too well-bred to shock them with a truth which generally their booksellers are the first that inform them of. This happens not till they have spent too much of their time to apply to any profession which might better fit their talents, and till such talents as they have are so far discredited as to be but of small service to them. For, what is the hardest case imaginable, the reputation of a man generally depends upon the first steps he makes in the