of
the moment, who would have gotten the Iliad by heart, and given it
to tradition? Ennius, Terence, Plautus, Lucretius, Horace, Virgil,
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho, Anacreon, Theocritus, all
the great poets of antiquity, were the delight of their
contemporaries.[3] The very existence of a poet, previous to the
invention of printing, depended upon his present popularity; and
how often has it impaired his future fame? Hardly ever. History
informs us, that the best have come down to us. The reason is
evident: the most popular found the greatest number of transcribers
for their MSS.; and that the taste of their contemporaries was
corrupt can hardly be avouched by the moderns, the mightiest of
whom have but barely approached them. Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and
Tasso, were all the darlings of the contemporary reader. Dante's
poem was celebrated long before his death; and, not long after it,
States negotiated for his ashes, and disputed for the sites of the
composition of the Divina Commedia. Petrarch was crowned in the
Capitol. Ariosto was permitted to pass free by the public robber
who had read the Orlando Furioso. I would not recommend Mr. * * to
try the same experiment with his Smugglers. Tasso, notwithstanding
the criticisms of the Cruscanti, would have been crowned in the
Capitol, but for his death.

"It is easy to prove the immediate popularity of the chief poets of
the only modern nation in Europe that has a poetical language, the
Italian. In our own, Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, Waller, Dryden,
Congreve, Pope, Young, Shenstone, Thomson, Johnson, Goldsmith,
Gray, were all as popular in their lives as since. Gray's Elegy
pleased instantly, and eternally. His Odes did not, nor yet do they
please like his Elegy. Milton's politics kept him down; but the
Epigram of Dryden, and the very sale of his work, in proportion to
the less reading time of its publication, prove him to have been
honoured by his contemporaries. I will venture to assert, that the
sale of the Paradise Lost was greater in the first four years after
its publication than that of 'The Excursion,' in the same number,
with the difference of nearly a century and a half between them of
time, and of thousands in point of general readers.

"It may be asked, why, having this