All that have any tafte of poetry will agree, that the great burlesque is much to be preferred to the low. It is much easier to make a great thing appear little, than a little one great: Cotton and others of a very low genius have done the former; but Philips, Garth, and Boileau only the latter.

A picture in miniature is every painter's talent; but a piece for a cupola, where all the figures are enlarged, yet proportioned to the eye, requires a mafter's hand.

It must ftill be more acceptable than the low burlefque, because the images of the latter are mean and filthy, and the language itfelf entirely unknown to all men of good breeding. The ftyle of Billingfgate would not make a very agreeable figure at St. James's. A gentleman would take but little pleasure in language, which he would think it hard to be accosted in, or in reading words which he could not pronounce without blufhing. The lofty burlefque is the more to be admired, because, to write it, the author must be master of two of the most different talents in

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hature. A talent to find out and expofe what is ridiculous, is very different from that which is to raise and elevate. We must read Virgil and Milton for the one, and Horace and Hudibras for the other. We know that the authors of excellent comedies have often failed in the grave ftyle, and the tragedian as often in comedy. Admiration and Laughter are of fuch oppofite natures, that they are feldom created by the fame perfon. The man of mirth is always obferving the follies and weaknieffes, the ferious writer the virtues or crimes of mankind; one is pleafed with contemplating a beau, the other a hero. Even from the fame object they would draw different ideas: Achilles would appear in very different lights to Therfites and Alexander. The one would admire the courage and greatnefs of his foul; the other would ridicule the vanity and rafhnefs of his temper As the fatyrist says to Hanibal :

-I curre per Alpes,

Ut pueris placeas, & declamatio fias.

The contrariety of style to the subject pleas fes the more ftrongly, because it is more furprifing; the expectation of the reader is plea

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pleasantly deceived, who expects an humble style from the fubject, or a great fubject from the ftyle. It pleafes the more univerfally, because it is agreeable to the taste both of the grave and the merry; but more particularly fo to those who have a relish of the best writers, and the nobleft fort of poetry. I shall produce only one paffage out of this poet, which is the misfortune of his Galligafkins:

My Galligafkins, which have long withstood
The winter's fury and encroaching frofts,
By time fubdued (what will not time subdue!)

This is admirably pathetical, and shews very well the viciffitudes of fublunary things. The reft goes on to a prodigious height; and a man in Greenland could hardly have made a more pathetick and terrible complaint. Is it not furprising that the fubject should be fo mean, and the verfe fo pompous? that the leaft things in his poetry, as in a microfcope, should grow great and formidable to the eye? efpecially confidering that, not understanding French, he had no model for his ftyle? that he thould have no writer to imitate, and himfelf

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himself be inimitable? that he should do all this before he was twenty? at an age, which is ufually pleased with a glare of false thoughts, little turns, and unnatural fuftian? at an age, at which Cowley, Dryden, and I had almost faid Virgil, were inconfiderable? So foon was his imagination at its full ftrength, his judgement ripe, and his humour complete.

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This poem was written for his own diverfion, without any defign of publication. was communicated but to me; but foon fpread, and fell into the hands of pirates. It was put out, vilely mangled, by Ben. Bragge; and impudently faid to be corrrected by the author. This grievance is now grown more epidemical; and no man now has a right to his own thoughts, or a title to his own writings. Xenophon answered the Perfian, who demanded his arms, "We have nothing now " left but our arms and our valour; if we "furrender the one, how fhall we make "ufe of the other?" Poets have nothing but their wits and their writings; and if they are plundered of the latter, I don't fee what good the former can do them. To pirate,

and publickly own it, to prefix their names to the works they fteal, to own and avow the theft, I believe, was never yet heard of but in England. It will found oddly to pofterity, that, in a polite nation, in an enlightened age, under the direction of the most wise, most learned, and moft generous encouragers of knowledge in the world, the property of a mechanick fhould be better fecured than that of a fcholar; that the poorest manual operations should be more valued than the noblest products of the brain; that it fhould be felony to rob a cobler of a pair of fhoes, and no crime to deprive the best author of his whole fubfiftence; that nothing fhould make a man a fure title to his own writings but the ftupidity of them; that the works of Dryden should meet with less encouragement than those of his own Flecnoe, or Blackmore; that Tillotfon and St. George, Tom Thumb and Temple, fhould be fet on an equal foot. This is the reason why this very paper has been fo long delayed; and while the most impudent and fcandalous libels are publickly vended by the pirates, this innocent work is forced to fteal abroad as if it were a libel.

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