their wits and their writings; and if they are plundered of the latter, I don't fee what good the former can do them. To pirate, and publickly own it, to prefix their names to the works they steal, to own and avow the theft, I believe, was never yet heard of but in England. It will found oddly to posterity, that, in a polite nation, in an enlightened age, under the direction of the most wife, moft learned, and moft generous encouragers of knowledge in the world, the property of a mechanick fhould be better fecured than that of a fcholar; that the pooreft manual operations fhould be more valued than the nobleft products of the brain; that it should be felony to rob a cobler of a pair of shoes, and no crime to deprive the best author of his whole subfiftence; that nothing fhould make a man a fure title to his own writings but the stupidity of them; that the works of Dryden should meet with lefs encouragement than those of his own, Flecknoe, or Blackmore; that Tillotfon and St. George, Tom Thumb and Temple, fhould be fet on an equal foot, This is the reason why this very Paper has been fo long delayed; and while the most impudent and fcandalous libels are publickly

vended by the pirates, this innocent work is forced to fteal abroad as if it were a libel.

Our prefent writers are by thefe wretches reduced to the fame condition Virgil was, when the centurion feized on his eftate. But I don't doubt but I can fix upon the Mæcenas of the prefent age, that will retrieve them from it. But, whatever effect this piracy may have upon us, it contributed very much to the advantage of Mr. Philips; it helped him to a reputation, which he neither defired nor expected, and to the honour of being put upon a work of which he did not think himfelf capable; but the event fhewed his modefty. And it was reasonable to hope, that he, who could raife mean fubjects fo high, fhould still be more elevated on greater themes; that he, that could draw fuch noble ideas from a fhilling, could not fail upon fuch a fubject as the duke of Marlborough, which is capable of heightening even the most low and trifling genius. And, indeed, moft of the great works which have been produced in the world have been owing lefs to the poet than the patron. Men of the greatest genius are fometimes lazy, and want a fpur; often

modeft,

modeft, and dare not venture in publicki

they certainly know their faults in the worst things; and even their best things they are not fond of, because the idea of what they ought to be is far above what they are. This induced me to believe that Virgil defired his work might be burnt, had not the fame Auguftus, that defired him to write them, preferved them from deftruction. A fcribbling beau may imagine a Poet may be induced to write, by the very pleasure he finds in writ ing; but that is feldom, when people are neceffitated to it. I have known men row, and ufe very hard labour, for diverfion, which if they had been tied to, they would have thought themselves very unhappy.

But to return to Blenheim, that work fo much admired by fome, and cenfured by others. I have often wifhed he had wrote it in Latin, that he might be out of the reach of the empty criticks, who could have as little understood his meaning in that language as they do his beauties in his own.

Falfe criticks have been the plague of all ages; Milton himself, in a very polite court,

has

has been compared to the rumbling of a wheel-barrow he had been on the wrong fide, and therefore could not be a good poet. And this, perhaps, may be Mr. Philips's cafe.

But I take generally the ignorance of his readers to be the occafion of their diflike. People that have formed their tafte upon the French writers can have no relifh for Philips they admire points and turns, and consequently have no judgement of what is great and majestick: he must look little in their eyes, when he foars fo high as to be almost out of their view. I cannot therefore allow any admirer of the French to be a judge of Blenheim, nor any who takes Bouhours for a compleat critick. He generally judges of the ancients by the moderns, and not the moderns by the ancients; he takes those pasfages of their own authors to be really fublime which come the nearest to it; he often calls that a noble and a great thought which is only a pretty and fine one, and has more inftances of the fublime out of Ovid de Triftibus, than he has out of all Virgil.

I fhall

I shall allow, therefore, only those to be judges of Philips, who make the ancients, and particularly Virgil, their standard.

But before I enter on this subject, I shall confider what is particular in the style of Philips, and examine what ought to be the style of heroick poetry; and next inquire how far he is come up to that style,

His style is particular, because he lays afide rhyme, and writes in blank verse, and uses old words, and frequently postpones the adjective to the substantive, and the fubftantive to the verb; and leaves out little particles, a, and the; her, and his; and uses frequent appofitions. Now let us examine, whether these alterations of ftyle be conformable to the true fublime,

WALSH