e us,
And that there is all Nature cries aloud
Through all her works, he must delight in virtue,
And that which he delights in must be happy.

Nor is ease more contrary to wit than to sublimity; the celebrated
stanza of Cowley, on a lady elaborately dressed, loses nothing of its
freedom by the spirit of the sentiment:

Th' adorning thee with so much art
Is but a barb'rous skill;
'Tis like the pois'ning of a dart,
Too apt before to kill.

Cowley seems to have possessed the power of writing easily beyond any
other of our poets; yet his pursuit of remote thought led him often into
harshness of expression.

Waller often attempted, but seldom attained it; for he is too frequently
driven into transpositions. The poets, from the time of Dryden, have
gradually advanced in embellishment, and consequently departed from
simplicity and ease.

To require from any author many pieces of easy poetry, would be indeed
to oppress him with too hard a task. It is less difficult to write a
volume of lines swelled with epithets, brightened by figures, and
stiffened by transpositions, than to produce a few couplets graced only
by naked elegance and simple purity, which require so much care and
skill, that I doubt whether any of our authors have yet been able, for
twenty lines together, nicely to observe the true definition of easy
poetry.

No. 78. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1759.

I have passed the summer in one of those places to which a mineral
spring gives the idle and luxurious an annual reason for resorting,
whenever they fancy themselves offended by the heat of London. What is
the true motive of this periodical assembly, I have never yet been able
to discover. The greater part of the visitants neither feel diseases nor
fear them. What pleasure can be expected more than the variety of the
journey, I know not, for the numbers are too great for privacy, and too
small for diversion. As each is known to be a spy upon the rest, they
all live in continual restraint; and having but a narrow range for
censure, they gratify its cravings by preying on one another.

But every condition has some advantages. In this confinement, a smaller
circle affords opportunities for more exact observation. The glass that
magnifies its object contracts the sight to a point; and the mind must
be fixed upon a single character to remark its minute peculiarities. The
quality or habit which passes unobserved in the tumult of successive