ad copies. No man ought severely to ape either the ancients or
the moderns; but, if it was necessary, to run into an extreme of one
side or the other, which is never done by a judicious and well-directed
mind, it would be better for a wit, as for a painter, to enrich himself
by what he can take from the ancients, than to grow poor by taking all
from his own stock; or openly to affect an imitation of those moderns,
whose more fertile genius has produced beauties, peculiar to themselves,
and which themselves only can display with grace: beauties of that
peculiar kind, that they are not fit to be imitated by others; though,
in those who first invented them, they may be justly esteemed, and in
them only[5].

FOOTNOTES:

[1] View of the immorality and profaneness of the English stage, by
Jeremy Collier. 1698.--Ed.

[2] See St. Paul, upon the subject of the Ignoto Deo.

[3] It is the licentiousness of the mimi and pantomimes, against which
the censure of the holy fathers particularly breaks out, as against
a thing irregular and indecent, without supposing it much connected
with the cause of religion.

[4] Eschylus, in my opinion, as well as the other poets, his
contemporaries, retained the chorus, not merely because it was the
fashion, but because, examining tragedy to the bottom, they found it
not rational to conceive, that an action, great and splendid, like
the revolution of a state, could pass without witnesses.

[5] Much light has been thrown on the Greek drama since the labours of
Dr. Johnson, and the pere Brumoy. The papers on the subject, in
Cumberland's Observer, Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Literature,
Mr. Mitchell's Dissertations, in his translation of Aristophanes,
and the essays on the Greek Orators and Dramatists, in the Quarterly
Review, may be mentioned as among the most popular attempts to
illustrate this pleasing department of the Belles-Lettres.--Ed.

DEDICATIONS.

Dr. James's Medicinal Dictionary, 3 vols. folio. 1743.

To Dr. Mead.

SIR,

That the Medicinal Dictionary is dedicated to you, is to be imputed only
to your reputation for superiour skill in those sciences, which I have
endeavoured to explain and facilitate; and you are, therefore, to
consider this address, if it be agreeable to you, as one of the rewards
of merit; and, if otherwise, as one of the inconveniencies of eminence.

However you shall receive it, my design