ed.

Those criticks are continually lamenting that Raffaelle had not the
colouring and harmony of Rubens, or the light and shadow of Rembrant,
without considering how much the gay harmony of the former, and
affectation of the latter, would take from the dignity of Raffaelle; and
yet Rubens had great harmony, and Rembrant understood light and shadow:
but what may be an excellence in a lower class of painting, becomes a
blemish in a higher; as the quick, sprightly turn, which is the life and
beauty of epigrammatick compositions, would but ill suit with the
majesty of heroick poetry.

To conclude; I would not be thought to infer, from any thing that has
been said, that rules are absolutely unnecessary; but to censure
scrupulosity, a servile attention to minute exactness, which is
sometimes inconsistent with higher excellency, and is lost in the blaze
of expanded genius.

I do not know whether you will think painting a general subject. By
inserting this letter, perhaps, you will incur the censure a man would
deserve, whose business being to entertain a whole room, should turn his
back to the company, and talk to a particular person[1].

I am, Sir, &c.

[1] By Sir Joshua Reynolds.

No. 77. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1759.

Easy poetry is universally admired; but I know not whether any rule has
yet been fixed, by which it may be decided when poetry can be properly
called easy. Horace has told us, that it is such as "every reader hopes
to equal, but after long labour finds unattainable." This is a very
loose description, in which only the effect is noted; the qualities
which produce this effect remain to be investigated.

Easy poetry is that in which natural thoughts are expressed without
violence to the language. The discriminating character of ease consists
principally in the diction; for all true poetry requires that the
sentiments be natural. Language suffers violence by harsh or by daring
figures, by transposition, by unusual acceptations of words, and by any
licence, which would be avoided by a writer of prose. Where any artifice
appears in the construction of the verse, that verse is no longer easy.
Any epithet which can be ejected without diminution of the sense, any
curious iteration of the same word, and all unusual, though not
ungrammatical structure of speech, destroy the grace of easy poetry.

The first lines of Pope's Iliad afford examples of many licences which
an easy writer must decline:

Achill