it takes. Several of
them lay it down as a maxim, that whatever dramatic performance has a
long run, must of necessity be good for nothing; as though the first
precept in poetry were "not to please." Whether this rule holds good
or not, I shall leave to the determination of those who are better
judges than myself; if it does, I am sure it tends very much to the
honour of those gentlemen who have established it; few of their pieces
having been disgraced by a run of three days, and most of them being
so exquisitely written, that the town would never give them more than
one night's hearing.

I have great esteem for a true critic, such as Aristotle and Longinus
among the Greeks; Horace and Quintilian among the Romans; Boileau and
Dacier among the French. But it is our misfortune, that some, who set
up for professed critics among us, are so stupid, that they do not
know how to put ten words together with elegance or common propriety;
and withal so illiterate, that they have no taste of the learned
languages, and therefore criticise upon old authors only at second
hand. They judge of them by what others have written, and not by any
notions they have of the authors themselves. The words unity, action,
sentiment and diction, pronounced with an air of authority, give them
a figure among unlearned readers, who are apt to believe they are very
deep because they are unintelligible. The ancient critics are full
of the praises of their contemporaries; they discover beauties which
escaped the observation of the vulgar, and very often find out reasons
for palliating and excusing such little slips and oversights as were
committed in the writings of eminent authors. On the contrary, most
of the smatterers in criticism, who appear among us, make it their
business to vilify and depreciate every new production that gains
applause, to descry imaginary blemishes, and to prove, by farfetched
arguments, that what pass for beauties in any celebrated piece are
faults and errors. In short, the writings of these critics, compared
with those of the ancients, are like the works of the sophists
compared with those of the old philosophers.

Envy and cavil are the natural fruits of laziness and ignorance; which
was probably the reason that in the heathen mythology Momus is said
to be the son of Nox and Somnus, of darkness and sleep. Idle men, who
have not been at the pains to accomplish or distinguish themselves,
are very apt to detract from others;