or wit appears. Had thofe Irishmen, female fcriblers, &c. offered their trafh to a Bartholomew-fair audience a few years ago, they would have been hiffed to fcorn. Our poor audiences fit with Dutch phlegm, and take what God fends. English good nature, or bon hommie, if you please, puts us upon a level with the most ftupid and barbarous of nations. What the judgement of our audiences condemns, their good nature with a vengeance! comes in and reprieves at the very gallows. However it is fome confolation to know that our ftage cannot poffibly be worse than it is, fo it must mend of course.

CHANGE of fcene was totally unknown to the ancients: in this mute difplay they must therefore have yielded to the wonderful mechanism of modern times. The mechanic wit of modern pantomime is tranfcendant; a lawyer is changed into a lady of Billingfgate, and a judge into an owl, in a moment. With regard to the dignity of amusement, I suppose our comic pantomime yields not to that of the ancients; for Plutarch tells us, in his Sympofiacs, that dogs regularly bred to the stage performed

formed parts in the ancient pantomime; a perfection to which we have not yet arrived.

THE modern harlequin is a perfect copy of the ancient fannio, or mimus. The mimus had his face smeared with foot, fuligine faciem obductus, and wore a habit patched of many colours; as we learn from Apuleius in his Apology, Quid enim fi choragium thimelicum poffiderem? Num ex eo argumentavere etiam uti me confueviffe Tragedi fyrmate, Hiftrionis crocota, Mimi centunculo? The centunculus is a diminutive of cento used by Juvenal for a garment made of patches; whence it is applied metaphorically to a poem compofed of fhreds of others; as the noted cento of Aufonius.

THE other pantomimic perfons of our theatre are Columbine, Pantaloon, and the Clown. The Italians have likewife The Doctor, Beltrame of Milan, Scapin, The Italian Captain, The Spanish Captain, Scaramouche, Giangurgulo the Calabrian, Mezzetin, Tartaglia, Punch, Narcifin de Malabergo. A grand pantomime, including all the Italian personages in their proper characters, is yet wanting to the English ftage. LETTER

I

LETTER XXX.

DO not wonder that the praises which Dr. Blackwall hath bestowed on Gravina's work, DELLA RAGION POETICA, together with the uncommon title of the work itself, have excited your curiofity. The book is rather rare, tho of no great price; and till I can procure you a copy, accept a short account of it.

IT is divided into two books, and addreffed A Madama Colbert Principesa di Carpegna; an impropriety fimilar to that of De Retz, in add reffing a work to a perfon who could never be fuppofed to understand it. Was the patroness the daughter or niece of the great Colbert? He mentions her ancestors as being of Scotland, and paffing into France. By the bye, the Scotish name is Cuthbert; and Mr. Cuthbert of Castlehill, an old Scotifh title, affumes, as I am informed by different countrymen of his, name of L'Abbé Colbert, when at Paris, where he hath fixed his refidence.

the

IN

6

In this addrefs there is nothing remarkable, save a very just remark, which, tho made likewife by Pope, is not, and never will be, fufficiently attended to; namely, that there is equal difficulty in judging perfectly well of poetry, as in compofing with perfection: and that it is far cafier to be a middling author than a juft critic.' He proceeds, in the address, to fhew the defign upon which his work is written; and what he understands by the title of it, DELLA RAGION POETICA, Of the Reasons or first Causes of Poetry; and obferves, that as every noble édifice is built according to the rules of architecture, and these rules have geometry for their ragion, or first caufe; fo the knowlege of poetry is the ragion or foundation of the rules of poetry. He then proceeds to fhew the true knowlege of poetry to confift in an eternal idea of fitnefs of things; and, in the fifteen or fixteen fucceeding fections, utterly lofes himfelf in the Platonic system; on which a man of great mind, who gives himself up to erudition, is fo apt to be wrecked. Platonifm was indeed the madness of Gravina, as appears from all his works: and an attachment to an enthufiaftic fyftem is the grand rea

fon.

fon why the works of the mafter of Metaftafio have been fo little read.

FROM this account of the leading idea of his work, you will at first glance perceive that the fabric rests upon fand. Nothing indeed can well be more futile, nor of falfer criticism, than to infer an analogy between geometry, the coldest operation of the judgement, and poetry, the warmest exertion of the imagination. The fact is, that the rules of poetry have. no ragion, as he quaintly and abstractedly calls it, but the example of former poets. I beg pardon for the expreffion, rules of poetry. Poetry knows no rules. The code of laws which Genius prescribes to his fubjects, will ever rest in their own bofoms. Rules of criticifm was the expreffion I meaned to ufe; and these have no ragion, or first foundation, at all. They are drawn from Homer, Sophocles, and Pindar: what these mafters do, fay the critics, is right, and every thing else is wrong. Poor judges! Ye flaves who judge of your mafters! Is not. NATURE greater than Homer, Sophocles, or Pindar? Is not GENIUS the fupreme arbiter and lord of Nature's whole domain; her fuperior,

her