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NUMB. 60. SATURDAY, June 9, 1759.

RITICISM is a ftudy by which men grow important and formidable at very fmall expence. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning thofe fciences which may by mere labour be obtained is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert fuch judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idlenefs keeps ignorant, may yet fupport his vanity by the name of a critick.

I hope it will give comfort to great numbers who are paffing through the world in obfcurity, when I inform them how eafily diftinction may be obtained. All the other powers of literature are coy and haughty, they must be long courted, and at laft are not always gained; but criticifm is a goddess eafy of accefs and forward of advance, who will meet the flow, and encourage the timorous; the want of meaning fhe fupplies with words, and the want of fpirit fhe recompenfes with malignity.

This profeffion has one recommendation peculiar to itself, that it gives vent to malignity without real mifchief. No genius was ever blafted by the breath of criticks. The poifon which, if confined, would have burft the heart, fumes away in empty hiffes, and malice is fet at ease with very little danger to merit. The critick is the only man whose

triumph

triumph is without another's pain, and whose greatnefs does not rife upon another's ruin.

To a study at once fo eafy and fo reputable, fo malicious and so harmless, it cannot be neceffary to invite my readers by a long or laboured exhortation; it is fufficient, fince all would be criticks if they could, to fhew by one eminent example that all can be criticks if they will.

Dick Minim, after the common course of puerile ftudies, in which he was no great proficient, was put apprentice to a brewer, with whom he had lived two years, when his uncle died in the city, and left him a large fortune in the ftocks. Dick had for fix months before used the company of the lower players, of whom he had learned to fcorn a trade, and being now at liberty to follow his genius, he refolved to be a man of wit and humour. That he might be properly initiated in his new character, he frequented the coffee-houfes near the theatres, where he listened very diligently, day after day, to those who talked of language and fentiments, and unities and catastrophes, till by flow degrees he began to think that he understood fomething of the stage, and hoped in time to talk himfelf.

But he did not truft fo much to natural fagacity, as wholly to neglect the help of books. When the theatres were fhut, he retired to Richmond with a few felect writers, whofe opinions he impreffed upon his memory by unwearied diligence; and, when he returned with other wits to the town, was able to tell, in very proper phrafes, that the chief bufinefs of art is to copy nature; that a perfect writer is not to be expected, because genius de

cays

cays as judgment increases; that the great art is the art of blotting; and that, according to the rule of Horace, every piece fhould be kept nine years.

Of the great authors he now began to difplay the characters, laying down as an univerfal pofition, that all had beauties and defects. His opinion was, that Shakespear, committing himfelf wholly to the impulfe of nature, wanted that correctnefs which learning would have given him; and that Jonson, trusting to learning, did not fufficiently caft his eye on nature. He blamed the ftanza of Spenfer, and could not bear the bexameters of Sidney. Denham and Waller he held the first reformers of English numbers; and thought that if Wailer could have obtained the ftrength of Denham, or Denham the fweetnefs of Waller, there had been nothing wanting to complete a poet. He often expreffed his commiferation of Dryden's poverty, and his indignation at the age which fuffered him to write for bread; he repeated with rapture the first lines of All for Love, but wondered at the corruption of tafte which could bear any thing fo unnatural as rhyming tragedies. In Otway he found uncommon powers of moving the paffions, but was difgufted by his general negligence, and blamed him for making a confpirator his hero; and never concluded his difquifition, without remarking how happily the found of the clock is made to alarm the audience. Southern would have been his favourite, but that he mixes comick with tragick fcenes, intercepts the natural courfe of the paffions, and fills the mind with a wild confufion of mirth and melancholy. The verfification of Rowe he thought too melodious for the stage, and too little

varied in different paffions. He made it the great fault of Congreve, that all his perfons were wits, and that he always wrote with more art than nature. He confidered Cato rather as a poem than a play, and allowed Addison to be the complete master of allegory and grave humour, but paid no great deference to him as a critick. He thought the chief merit of Prier was in his eafy tales and lighter poems, though he allowed that his Solomon had many noble fentiments elegantly expreffed. In Swift he discovered an inimitable vein of irony, and an eafinefs which all would hope and few would attain. Pope he was inclined to degrade from a poet to a verfifier, and thought his numbers rather luscious than sweet. He often lamented the neglect of Phedra and Hippolitus, and wished to fee the ftage under better regulations.

These affertions paffed commonly uncontradicted; and if now and then an opponent started up, he was quickly repreffed by the fuffrages of the company, and Minim went away from every difpute with elation of heart and increase of confidence.

He now grew conscious of his abilities, and began to talk of the present state of dramatick poetry; wondered what was become of the comick genius which supplied our ancestors with wit and pleasantry, and why no writer could be found that durft now venture beyond a farce. He faw no reafon for thinking that the vein of humour was exhausted, fince we live in a country where liberty fuffers every character to spread itself to its utmost bulk, and which therefore produces more originals than all the reft of the world together. Of tragedy he conVOL. VIII. cluded

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cluded bufinefs to be the foul, and yet often hinted that love predominates too much upon the modera ftage.

He was now an acknowledged critick, and had his own feat in a coffee-houfe, and headed a party in the pit. Minim has more vanity than ill-nature, and feldom defires to do much mifchief; he will perhaps murmur a little in the ear of him that fits next him, but endeavours to influence the audience to favour, by clapping when an actor exclaims ye gods, or laments the mifery of his country.

By degrees he was admitted to rehearsals, and many of his friends are of opinion, that our prefent poets are indebted to him for their happiest thoughts, by his contrivance the bell was rung twice in Barbarefa, and by his perfuafion the author of Cine concluded his play without a couplet; for what can be more abfurd, faid Minim, than that part of a play fhould be rhymed, and part written in blank verfe and by what acquifition of faculties is the fpeaker, who never could find rhymes before, enabled to rhyme at the conclufion of an act?

He is the great inveftigator of hidden beauties, and is particularly delighted when he finds the found an echo to the fenfe. He has read all our pocts with particular attention to this delicacy of verfification, and wonders at the fupineness with which their works have been hitherto perufed, fo that no man has found the found of a drum in this diftich,

"When pulpit, drum ecclefiaftic,

"Was beat with fift inftead of a ftick;"

and