nsporting the glad nations all around,
Who oft shall doubt, and oft suspend their joy,
And oft imagine all an empty dream;
The conqueror himself shall cry amaz'd,
'Tis not our work, alas we did it not;
The hand of God, the hand of God is here!
For thee, so great shall be thy high renown,
That same shall think no music like thy name,
Around the circling globe it shall be spread,
And to the world's last ages shall endure;
And the most lofty, most aspiring man,
Shall want th' assurance in his secret prayers
To ask such high felicity and fame,
As Heav'n has freely granted thee; yet this
That seems so great, so glorious to thee now,
Would look how low, how vile to thy great mind,
If I could set before th' astonished eyes,
Th' excess of glory, and th' excess of bliss
That is prepar'd for thy expiring soul,
When thou arriv'st at everlasting day.

The quotation by Mr. Dennis is longer, but we are persuaded the reader
will not be displeased that we do not take the trouble to transcribe
the whole, as it does not improve, but rather grows more languid.
How strangely are people deceived in their own productions! In the
language of sincerity we cannot discover a poetical conception, one
striking image, or one animated line in the above, and yet Mr. Dennis
observes to Sir Richard Steele, that these are the lines, by quoting
which, he would really have done him honour.

But Mr. Dennis's resentment did not terminate here; he attempted to
expose a paper in the Spectator upon dramatic conduct, in which
the author endeavours to shew that a poet is not always obliged to
distribute poetical justice on this very reasonable account, that
good and evil happen alike to all men on this side the grave. To this
proposition our critic objects, 'that it is not only a very false, but
a dangerous assertion, that we neither know what men really are, nor
what they suffer. Besides, says he, let it be considered, that a man
is a creature, who is created immortal, and a creature consequently
that will find a compensation in futurity, for any seeming inequality
in his destiny here; but the creatures of a poetical creator, are
imaginary, and transitory; they have no longer duration than the
representation of their respective fables, and consequently if
they offend, they must be punished during that representation, and
therefore we are very far from pretending, that poetical justice is
an equal representation of t