time that we must allow Dr. Donne to have been a very great wit; Mr. Waller a very gallant writer; Sir John Suckling a very gay one; and Mr. Cowley a great genius; yet methinks I can hardly fancy any one of them to have been a very great lover. And it grieves me that the ancients, who could never have handsomer women than we have, should nevertheless be so much more in love than we are. But it is probable the great reason of this may be the cruelty of our ladies; for a man must be imprudent indeed to let his paffion take very deep root, when he has no reason to expect any fort of return to it. And if it be so, there ought to be a petition made to the fair, that they would be pleased sometimes to abate a little of their rigour for the propagation of good verse. I do not mean that they should confer their favours upon none but men of wit, that would be too great a confinement indeed; but that they would admit them upon the fame foot with other people: and if they please now and then to make the experiment, I fancy they will find entertainment enough from the very variety of it.

There are three forts of poems that are proper for love: pastorals, elegies, and lyric verses; under which last, I comprehend all fongs, odes, sonnets, madrigals, and stanzas. Of all these, pastoral is the lowest, and, upon that account, perhaps most proper for love; fince it is the nature of that paffion, to render the foul foft and humble. These three forts of poems ought to differ, not only in their numbers, but in the defigns, and in every thought of them. Though we have no difference

ference between the verfes of pastoral and elegy in the modern languages, yet the numbers of the first ought to be loofer and not fo fonorous as the other; the thoughts more fimple, more easy, and more humble. The defign ought to be the representing the life of a shepherd, not only by talking of sheep and fields, but by showing us the truth, fincerity, and innocence, that accompanies that fort of life for though I know our masters, Theocritus and Virgil, have not always conformed in this point of innocence; Theocritus, in his Daphnis, having made his love too wanton, and Virgil, in his Alexis, placed his paffion upon a boy; yet (if we may be allowed to cenfure those whom we must always reverence) I take both those things to be faults in their poems, and should have been better pleased with the Alexis if it had been made to a woman; and with the Daphnis, if he had made his shepherds more modest. When I give humility and modesty as the character of pastoral, it is not, however, but that a shepherd may be allowed to boaft of his pipe, his fongs, his flocks, and to shew a contempt of his rival, as we fee both Theocritus and Virgil do. But this must be still in fuch a manner as if the occafion offered itself, and was not fought, and proceeded rather from the violence of the shepherd's paffion, than any natural pride or malice in him.

There ought to be the fame difference observed between paftorals and clegies as between the life of the country and the court. In the first, love ought to be represented as among shepherds, in the other as among gentlemen.

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gentlemen. They ought to be smooth, clear, tender, and paffionate. The thoughts may be bold, more gay, and more elevated, than in paftoral. The passions they represent, either more gallant or more violent, and less innocent than the others. The fubjects of them, prayers, praises, expoftulations, quarrels, reconcilements, threatnings, jealoufies, and in fine, all the natural effects of love.

Lyricks may be allowed to handle all the same subjects with elegy, but to do it however in a different manner. An elegy ought to be so entirely one thing, and every verse ought so to depend upon the other, that they should not be able to fubfift alone; or, to make use of the words of a * great modern critic, there must be

"

a just coherence made "Between each thought, and the whole model laid, "So right, that every step may higher rife, "Like goodly mountains, till they reach the skies."

Lyricks, on the other hand, though they ought to make one body as well as the other, yet may consist of parts that are entire of themselves. It being a rule in modern languages, that every stanza ought to make up a complete sense without running into the other. Frequent fentences, which are accounted faults in elegies, are beauties here. Besides this, Malherbe, and the French poets after him, have made it a rule in the stanzas of fix lines, to make a paufe at the third; and in those of

* Lord Mulgrave.

ten

ten lines, at the third and the seventh. And it must be confeft that this exactness renders them much more musical and harmonious; though they have not always been so religious in observing the latter rule as the

former.

But I am engaged in a very vain, or a very foolish design: those who are critics, it would be a presumption in me to pretend I could instruct; and to instruct those who are not, at the fame time I write myself, is (if I may be allowed to apply another man's fimile) like felling arms to an enemy in time of war : though there ought, perhaps, to be more indulgence shewn to things of love and gallantry than any others, because they are generally written when people are young, and intended for ladies who are not supposed to be very old; and all young people, especially of the fair fex, are more taken with the liveliness of fancy, than the correctness of judgment. It may be also obferved, that to write of love well, a man must be really in love; and to correct his writings well, he must be out of love again. I am well enough fatisfied I may be in circumstances of writing of love, but I am almost in despair of ever being in circumstances of correcting it. This I hope may be a reason for the fair and the young to pass over fome of the faults; and as for the grave and wife, all the favour I shall beg of them is, that they would not read them. Things of this nature are calculated only for the former. If love-verfes work upon the ladies, a man will not trouble himself with what the crifics say of them: and if they do not, all

the commendations the critics can give him will make but very little amends. All I shall say for these trifles is, that I pretend not to vie with any man whatsoever. I doubt not but there are several now living who are able to write better on all subjects than I am upon any one: but I will take the boldness to say, that there is no one man among them all who shall be readier to acknowledge his own faults, or to do justice to the merits of other people.

POEMS