riddance that there is little left either for censure or for
praise: For no part of a poem is worth our discommending, where the
whole is insipid; as when we have once tasted of palled wine, we stay
not to examine it glass by glass. But while they affect to shine in
trifles, they are often careless in essentials. Thus, their
Hippolytus is so scrupulous in point of decency, that he will rather
expose himself to death, than accuse his stepmother to his father;
and my critics I am sure will commend him for it. But we of grosser
apprehensions are apt to think that this excess of generosity is not
practicable, but with fools and madmen. This was good manners with
a vengeance; and the audience is like to be much concerned at the
misfortunes of this admirable hero. But take Hippolytus out of his
poetic fit, and I suppose he would think it a wiser part to set the
saddle on the right horse, and choose rather to live with the
reputation of a plain-spoken, honest man, than to die with the infamy
of an incestuous villain. In the meantime we may take notice, that
where the poet ought to have preserved the character as it was
delivered to us by antiquity, when he should have given us the
picture of a rough young man, of the Amazonian strain, a jolly
huntsman, and both by his profession and his early rising a mortal
enemy to love, he has chosen to give him the turn of gallantry, sent
him to travel from Athens to Paris, taught him to make love, and
transformed the Hippolytus of Euripides into Monsieur Hippolyte.
I should not have troubled myself thus far with French poets, but
that I find our Chedreux critics wholly form their judgments by them.
But for my part, I desire to be tried by the laws of my own country;
for it seems unjust to me, that the French should prescribe here,
till they have conquered. Our little sonneteers, who follow them,
have too narrow souls to judge of poetry. Poets themselves are the
most proper, though I conclude not the only critics. But till some
genius, as universal as Aristotle, shall arise, one who can penetrate
into all arts and sciences, without the practice of them, I shall
think it reasonable, that the judgment of an artificer in his own art
should be preferable to the opinion of another man; at least where he
is not bribed by interest, or prejudiced by malice. And this,
I suppose, is manifest by plain inductions: For, first, the crowd
cannot be presumed to have more than a gross instinct o