wards were proposed to people for being good, and punishments threatened to vice, by which enticements and terrors, the very idea and essence of virtue were destroyed. His lordship hath taken rewards and punishments out of the hands of superstition, and now virtue rewards, and vice punishes itself. Every man hath a portable court in his own conscience, which, in all actions, distributes justice fully and effectually on the spot. Go where thou wilt, O man, although to ever so great a distance from witnesses and judges, thou canst no longer do, nor even think, an ill thing, because thou art now thine own lawgiver and judge. I can trust my wife in thy bed, and my purse in thy pocket. The beauty of thy virtue is greater than hers, and the deformity of vice will effectually secure to me my uncounted guineas. This holds the strings of my purse, and that engages thy caresses, while spouse sleeps as quietly as with me; thanks to the good lord of Shaftsbury. Since the great reformation introduced by his lordship, religion begins to have an air of good humour. Hell, the devil, and damnation, are now excluded from good company, are scarcely heard of in an oath, or in the pulpit, and even sermons begin to grow polite. Our great folks, not liking the vulgar religions with which these countries abound, as being both expensive and inconvenient, were on the point of renouncing all religion, when his lordship, who knew what they wanted, revealed to them the religion of taste. This religion sits easy, and breaks no squares. It neither shocks nor offends. It neither hampers, nor restrains. It can never occasion either disputes, or wars. It distinguishes the polite part of the world from the vulgar, who cannot parcipitate in it. But, it may be, thou wilt ask me what it is? I tell thee again, it is, taste and good breeding.

The last extraordinary performance, which I shall at this time bring under the reader's consideration, is the celebrated play of Hurlothrumbo, wrote by Mr. Johnson (not Ben), the support and glory of the English stage. Thou seest, reader, how, like a skilful manager of a feast, I have reserved the best and most delicious course for the last. First, an Hill, good; then a Shaftsbury, excellent; lastly, a Johnson, incomparable.

It is remarked, of Shakspeare, that had he perfectly un

derstood the art and rules of dramatic writing we should have been deprived of numberless beauties, which we now enjoy in that great poet. But had Johnson's genius been hampered with the trammels of the drama, he had been wholly lost to us. Rules, the best of critics will allow, were made only for little and narrow spirits. They are mere leading strings for infant imaginations, which would tumble and grovel on the earth without them. But the soaring soul, whose range is infinitude, can never be out of its way, because its way is boundless. That fire and rage, so necessarily required in every great poet, with what vehemence do they blaze out in this animated composition! With a noble negligence of rule he hurries his subject, and with it sweeps his reader through heaven, earth, and hell! In one moment he dives into the deepest recesses of the dark abyss, and before time can bring that moment to a period, he mounts again with so sublime and rapid a wing, that this whole globe vanishes from his sight, and he sees the stars faintly twinkle beneath his feet. He hath thrown off reason, that tyrant of the fancy, which damps its fire, and cramps its vigour, and boldly breaking through all the fetters of criticism, hath asserted the native liberty of poetry.

But as, according to the tenor of this my learned and elaborate treatise, that work which pleases most people, ought to be the most highly esteemed; so, to give this inimitable performance its just character, all London, that great city of taste and judgment, London, for above fifty nights successively, poured forth its inhabitants, great and small, rich and poor, fine and shabby, to the representation of this noble entertainment. They all saw, they were all transported with delight, and all returned again to repeat so exquisite an enjoyment. Pindar, that bright star of the ancients, was admired for a majestic negligence, a daring digressive spirit, which at once gave fire and variety to his poems. And Johnson, the comet of this age, merits equal glory for that conflagration of sentiment and style that kindles in his first scene, and rages to the very epilogue.

Soon after this performance had seen the light, I happened to visit an old gentleman, a friend of mine, who hath been a politician, ever since the reign of king William. He reads the news, lectures his neighbours on the subject

of peace and war, and gives as shrewd guesses at the success of a congress, as any one I know. I found him engaged in a pretty warm dispute with a maiden lady about the age of thirty, who had been a beauty in her time; a young officer, who was nephew to my friend, and a noted critic. Hurlothrumbo was the subject of the controversy, which the young warrior read to the company with an air and accent, that did justice to the performance.

After the usual civilities to me, upon entering the room, they resumed their dispute. The old gentleman, who is a zealous friend to the present happy establishment, both in church and state, seemed very warm. He was jealous of every line, and either saw or suspected treason in every page. There is nothing, said he, can be more evident, than that it is a treasonable and factious pamphlet, wrote to sow sedition among the people, and bespatter the ministry at least, if not to bring in the pretender. If this is not the design of the writer, why those scurrilous reflections on kings and great men, in the very first act? Why does the plot lie so deep? And why is the whole conducted in so seemingly incoherent and obscure a manner, that it is scarcely possible to understand it? What occasion for so much darkness, if all was as it should be? If it was not the spawn of a damned Popish plot, there had been no need of introducing so many familiars and devils. Why that lion overcome and killed by Hurlothrumbo? Is not a lion part of the arms of England? I do not like that lion.

In short his passion transported him so far, that he would not allow the performance had either spirit or sublimity in it, nor, in some places, even sense. He concluded with a piece of advice to his nephew, to decry it in all companies, lest he should be suspected of disaffection, and lose his post by it.

Here the officer, who is a man of taste and fire, undertook the defence of his favourite play, with as much warmth, as was decent in the support of an opinion, opposite to that of his uncle. That youthful warmth, said he, which is necessary in the reader of such a performance, is a little too much abated in you, sir, to keep pace with such writings as this. Your great attachment to our establishment hath

VOL. V.

made you watchful and apprehensive, where there are no grounds for suspicion. The introducing of demons is a thing very innocent and common in our best plays. As for the lion, he is but a lion, and I will answer for him, hath no designs upon the reader, but to please.

Having thus answered his uncle's objections, he proceeded to set forth the beauties of the play in such a strain, as shewed he entered deep into its spirit, and was sensibly touched with its masterly strokes. He commended the force and propriety of the diction, the justness of the sentiments, the sublimity of the images, the beauty and variety of the descriptions, and dwelt a long time on the inimitable art of the author, who had so artfully concealed his art, that it required infinite penetration to discover there was any art in it at all.

The critic waited a long time, with impatience, for an opportunity, to interpose his sentiments of the matter, and was, after all, obliged to interrupt the officer. He told us, he did not give his judgment on that occasion, with a design to impose it on us, because he had acquired some reputation for skill in criticism, but to give a right turn to the controversy, which, in his opinion, did not enter into the true merits.

I will readily grant, said he, that a true poetical fury enlivens the whole; yet I can never forgive an author letting loose the reins of his fancy, and indulging it in the transgression of all rule and order. A writer of any kind, should consider, that his readers have reason, as well as imagination, and while he gratifies the one, should take care not to shock the other. What is unreasonable can never be natural, and what is unnatural, can never truly please. Here gentlemen, you see no harmony, no cohesion of parts, no unity of time or place, preserved. A wilderness of similies, descriptions, digressions, transitions, tumbled in one after another upon the reader, hurry him along in such confusion, that he hath no leisure to attend to the management of the fable, the choice of the metaphors, nor the delicacy of the colourings. All is a chaos of beautiful materials, huddled together in vast confusion, from whence we sometimes hear an immoderate peal of laughter, sometimes frightful lamentations. Now we grope in a hell of darkness

and terror, and anon, have such a burst of light and blaze about us, as no human eyeball can endure. The sentiments, in short, are often extravagant, the expressions outrageous, and the fable so embarrassed with collateral, or opposite drifts, that it is impossible to keep in with his design, or preserve the thread he is twisting.

This severe censure grated most disagreeably on the ears of the officer and the lady, the latter of whom being perfectly charmed with the innumerable beauties of Hurlothrumbo, undertook its defence in a manner suitable to the good taste and sensibility of her sex.

How cold, said she, how void of feeling must be that heart, that reads without emotion, the powerful workings of the passions in this surprising play! How lofty are its flights! How musical its style! How amusing its plot! How heroic its battles! Above all, how engaging its interviews of love! There is nothing to be met with, in the whole circle of reading, that so absolutely melts one down, as the passionate parting of the king and his mistress. There is tenderness in perfection. The languishing regards, the mutual dying in each other's arms, the transporting expressions of infinite affection, are what no performance ever equalled it in, and what the icy rules about your heart (turning to the critic), will never suffer you to conceive. I sir, can never forgive your losing the man in the critic, and divesting yourself of that, which is most amiable in human nature. You measure poetry by a parcel of cold insipid rules, enough to extinguish the fire of a description, and freeze a metaphor to an icicle. You prey upon the garbage of an author, and can find no taste in the delicious dainties he dresses up for fine imaginations. You dive into an author, only as worms do into wood, where you find him unsound. You measure all things by the narrowness of your own understanding, and whatever exceeds that wretched scantling, you pronounce enormous, monstrous, mad. Books were not wrote for you, but for the world, and it is downright assurance in you to read at all. I wish, sir, you would confine yourself to a newspaper, and the almanack. I own I should have had but very little pleasure in this conversation, had it not been for the polite and ingenious defence of Hurlothrumbo, which the