uch the rather, because he
has declared that it pleases him. But he has taken his last farewell
of the muses, and he has done it civilly, by honouring them with the
name of "his long acquaintances," which is a compliment they have
scarce deserved from him. For my own part, I bear a share in
the public loss; and how emulous soever I may be of his fame and
reputation, I cannot but give this testimony of his style, that it is
extremely poetical, even in oratory; his thoughts elevated sometimes
above common apprehension; his notions politic and grave, and tending
to the instruction of princes, and reformation of states; that
they are abundantly interlaced with variety of fancies, tropes, and
figures, which the critics have enviously branded with the name of
obscurity and false grammar.

"Well, he is now fettered in business of more unpleasant nature:" The
muses have lost him, but the commonwealth gains by it; the corruption
of a poet is the generation of a statesman.

"He will not venture again into the civil wars of censure,
_ubi--nullos habitura triumphos_:" If he had not told us he
had left the muses, we might have half suspected it by that word
_ubi_, which does not any way belong to them in that place:
the rest of the verse is indeed Lucan's, but that _ubi_, I will
answer for it, is his own. Yet he has another reason for this disgust
of poesy; for he says immediately after, that "the manner of plays
which are now in most esteem is beyond his power to perform:" to
perform the manner of a thing, I confess, is new English to me.
"However, he condemns not the satisfaction of others, but rather their
unnecessary understanding, who, like Sancho Panza's doctor, prescribe
too strictly to our appetites; for," says he, "in the difference of
tragedy and comedy, and of farce itself, there can be no determination
but by the taste, nor in the manner of their composure."

We shall see him now as great a critic as he was a poet; and the
reason why he excelled so much in poetry will be evident, for it will
appear to have proceeded from the exactness of his judgment. "In
the difference of tragedy, comedy, and farce itself, there can be no
determination but by the taste." I will not quarrel with the obscurity
of his phrase, though I justly might; but beg his pardon if I do
not rightly understand him. If he means that there is no essential
difference betwixt comedy, tragedy, and farce, but what is only made
by the people's taste, whic