to an account generally true, must be a deviation from the authority professedly followed. Thus, in attributing irrascibility to Brutus, or valour to Domitius Anobarbus, in making Helen contemporary with Paris, or Dido with Æneas, the poet deviates from history, and is conceived to make use of a licence. So far the nature of this quality of poetical composition is, in the present instance, easily deterinined. But to ascertain the object of such deviations from science, seems attended with as little difficulty. In order that they should be allowable, without which they can be evidently no licences, they should at least conform more in their altered, than original state, to the end of poetry, by being more capable of giving pleasure, or awakening interest.

And this

end cannot be attained, without rendering the production more striking: for every improvement which is added to the original matter of the subject, as it increases its effect must strengthen its impressiveness.

So far the NATURE of those liberties taken with the science of history is explained, and shewn to possess every necessary conformity to the general definition formerly

given of Poetick Licence. But to what ExTENT these liberties may be carried,,without transgressing the due bounds of licence, demands a more particular conside

ration.

DIRECTING our attention to the historick epopee in the first place, every difficulty which requires a solution, in reference to its historical incidents, appears to be included in the following question.

What may be the liberties which a poet is permitted to take with the truth of the incidents, on which he founds an historick poem; or, to speak with a more immediate reference to the subject of the present investigation, how far in taking any such liberties will he be justified by Poetick Licence?

And this question may, I believe, receive a solution from unfolding and applying those principles, which direct the poet in the choice, and guide him in the management of his subject.

When we regard the more important incidents which form the action, or groundwork of the composition, they do not appear capable of deriving any advantage from the poet's pushing the bounds of truth into the

regions of fiction. In pursuing any track which occasionally falls into the direct course of history, a poet's way must be influenced by one of the before-mentioned principles of his art: it may be on the one side directed by an attachment to truth, or deflected on the other by the love of embellishment. But in his attempt to influence the reader's gratification, by means of the first of these qualities, his powers admit neither of increase or diminution. What is already truth, cannot be made more so; and of those persons, among whom he can expect to find readers, all must be supposed acquainted with the real statement of the more important facts in his subject. Nor does this happen to be the case with such readers only as live near the period when those occurrences took place, that are admitted into his descriptions; as his subject must, of necessity, be recommended by its dignity, it must rank among those great occurrences that exist longest, and most forcibly in the memory. The knowledge of the poet's subject being thus definite and general, the alteration of any historick incident, for the purpose of securing the second quality, and conferring some particular beauty of embellishment, must be productive of a

consequence, which, to a certain degree, will weaken the effect of the composition, by unfitting the mind for the perception of that pleasure, which it is intended to awaken. For it can scarcely admit of any doubt, that such a play of the imagination will arise from hence, as will rather distract our attention, than concentrate our interest, in the perusal ; as the most striking circumstances in the authour's work will force themselves into a comparison, what he has altered contrasting itself with what we remember as true. Thus in the particular species of composition before us, where a number of recent events exist in our recollection, when the truth of any is sacrificed to embellishment, we must be either immediately shocked at the undertaking, or at least too far engrossed by a sense of its impropriety to remain in that state of freedom' from prepossession, which will enable us to acknowledge any beauties that the poet may have acquired in his search after extraneous ornament.

This is, however, but a negative inconvenience, and consequently trivial, when compared with others which may be apprehended to arise, when the poet ventures upon the project of blending fiction with truth in a