luxury; and the
reigning luxury of modern Italy, is that soft and effeminate music,
which abounds in the Opera.'

In this Essay Mr. Dennis remarks, that entertainments entirely made
up of music can never instruct the mind, nor promote one excellent
purpose in human nature. 'Perhaps, says he, the pride and vanity that
is in mankind, may determine the generality to give into music, at the
expence of poetry. Men love to enjoy their pleasures entirely, and not
to have them restrained by awe, or curbed by mortification. Now there
are but few judicious spectators at our dramatic representations,
since none can be so, but who with great endowments of nature have had
a very generous education; and the rest are frequently mortified, by
passing foolish judgments: But in music the case is vastly different;
to judge of that requires only use, and a fine ear, which the footman
oft has a great deal finer than his master. In short, a man without
common sense may very well judge of what a man writes without common
sense, and without common sense composes.' He then inquires what
the consequence will be if we banish poetry, which is, that taste,
politeness, erudition and public spirit will fall with it, and all for
a Song. The declension of poetry in Greece and Rome was soon followed
by that of liberty and empire; according to Roscommon in his Essay on
Translated Verse.

True poets are the guardians of a state,
And when they fail, portend approaching fate:
For that which Rome to conquest did inspire,
Was not the Vestal, but the Muses fire;
Heav'n joins the blessings, no declining age
E'er felt the raptures of poetic rage.

In 1711 Mr. Dennis published an Essay upon Public Spirit, being a
satire in prose, upon the Manners and Luxury of the Times, the chief
sources of our present Parties and Divisions. This is one of the most
finished performances of our author; the intention is laudable, and
the execution equal to the goodness of the design. He begins the
Essay, with a definition, of the love of our country, shews how
much the phrase has been prostituted, and how seldom understood, or
practised in its genuine sense. He then observes how destructive it is
to indulge an imitation of foreign fashions; that fashions are often
followed by the manners of a people from whom they are borrowed; as
in the beginning of king Charles the IId's reign. After the general
distraction which was immediately consequent upon the Restoration,