то THE REV. HENRY GOLDSMITH. I DEAR SIRS AM fenfible that the friendship between us can ac quire no new force from the ceremonies of a Dedication; and, perhaps, it demands an excufe, thus to prefix your name to my attempts, which you decline giving with your own. But as a part of this poem was formerly written to you from Switzerland, the whole can now, with propriety, be only inscribed to you. It will also throw a light upon many parts of it, when the reader understands, that it is addreffed to a man, who, despifing fame and fortune, has retired early to happiness and obfcurity, with an income of forty pounds a year. I now perceive, my dear Brother, the wisdom of your humble choice. You have entered upon a fa cred office, where the harvest is great, and the labourers are but few; while you have left the field of ambition, where the labourers are many, and the harvest not worth carrying away. But of all kinds of ambition, as things are now circumftanced, perhaps that which purfues poetical fame is the wildest. What from the increafed refinement of the times, from the diverfity of judgments produced by oppofing fystems of criticism, and from the more prevalent diversions of opinion influenced by party, the strongest and hap. pieft efforts can expect to please but in a very narrow circle. Poetry makes a principal amusement among unpolished nations; but in a country verging to the extremes of refinement, Painting and Mufic come in for a fhare. And as they offer the feeble mind a lefs laborious entertainment, they at first rival Poetry, and at length supplant her they engrofs all favour to themselves; and, though but younger fifters, feize upon the elder's birthright. Yet, however this art may be neglected by the powerful, it is still in greater danger from the mistaken efforts of the learned to improve it. What criticisms have we not heard of late in favour of blank-verse and Pindaric odes, choruffes, anapests, and iambics, alliterative care, and happy negligence! Every abfurdity has now a champion to ༔་ to defend it; and, as he is generally much in the wrong, fo he has always much to fay, for error is ever talkative. But there is an enemy to this art ftill more dangerous. I mean, party. Party entirely diftorts the judgment, and deftroys the taste. A mind capable of relishing general beauty, when once infected with. this disease, can only find pleasure in what contributes to increase the diftemper. Like the tyger, that feldom defifts from pursuing man after having once preyed upon human flesh, the reader, who has once gratified his appetite with calumny, makes, ever afthe most agreeable feaft upon murdered reputation. Such readers generally admire fome half-witted thing, who wants to be thought a bold man, having loft the character of a wife one. Him they dignify with the name of Poet: his lampoons are called fatires; his turbulence is said to be force, and his phrenzy fire. ter, What reception a poem may find, which has neither abuse, party, nor blank-verfe to fupport it, I cannot tell, nor am I much folicitous to know. My aims are right. Without efpoufing the cause of any party, I have attempted to moderate the rage of all. I have endeavoured to show, that there may be equal happiness in other states, though differently governed from our own ; |