complete master of allegory and grave humour,1 but paid no great deference to him as a critic.2 He thought the chief merit of Prior was in his easy tales and lighter poems, though he allowed that his Solomon had many noble sentiments elegantly expressed. In Swift he discovered an inimitable vein of irony, and an easiness which all would hope and few would attain. Pope he was inclined to degrade from a poet to a versifier, and thought his numbers rather luscious than sweet. He often lamented the neglect of Phædra and Hippolitus, and wished to see the stage under better regulations. 1 "The chief and characteristical excellency of Addison was his humour."-Warton's Essay on Pope, p. 269. 2 "Addison in his life, and for some time afterwards, was considered by the greater part of readers as supremely excelling both in poetry and criticism. A great writer [Warburton] has lately styled him 'an indifferent poet, and a worse critic.""-Johnson's Works, vii. 451. 3 "Ut sibi quivis Speret idem, sudet multum, frustraque laboret, Ausus idem."-Horace, Ars Poetica, 1. 240. Pope in the Dunciad, i. 21, addressing Swift, says:— "Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air, Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair." 4 The tendency of the first part of Warton's Essay was to degrade Pope, if not to a versifier, at all events to a much lower rank than that in which he had been hitherto placed. Johnson referred, I think, to Warton when he wrote:-" After all this it is surely superfluous to answer the question that has once been asked, whether Pope was a poet, otherwise than by asking in return, if Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found ?"-Johnson's Works, viii. 345. 5 A tragedy by Edmund Smith. Addison, in the Spectator, No. 18, writing of its failure, asks:-Would one think it was possible (at a time when an author lived that was able to These assertions passed commonly uncontradicted; and if now and then an opponent started up, he was quickly repressed by the suffrages of the company, and Minim went away from every dispute with elation of heart and increase of confidence. He now grew conscious of his abilities, and began to talk of the present state of dramatic poetry; wondered what was become of the comic genius which supplied our ancestors with wit and pleasantry, and why no writer could be found that durst now venture beyond a farce. He saw no reason for thinking that the vein of humour was exhausted, since we live in a country where liberty suffers every character to spread itself to its utmost bulk, and which therefore produces more originals than all the rest of the world together.' Of tragedy he concluded write the Phædra and Hippolitus) for a people to be so stupidly fond of the Italian opera, as scarce to give a third day's hearing to that admirable tragedy?" Johnson on this remarks:-"The authority of Addison is great; yet the voice of the people, when to please the people is the purpose, deserves regard. In this question I cannot but think the people in the right."-Johnson's Works, vii. 376. 1 Minim, I suspect, is borrowing from Johnson's Preface to the Harleian Miscellany, where he writes:-"It is observed that among the natives of England is to be found a greater variety of humour than in any other country; and, doubtless, where every man has a full liberty to propagate his conceptions, variety of humour must produce variety of writers, and where the number of authors is so great, there cannot but be some worthy of distinction."-Johnson's Works, v. 192. Johnson refers most likely to Temple's Essay Of Poetry.-Temple's Works, ed. 1757, iii. 425. business to be the soul, and yet often hinted that love predominates too much upon the modern stage. He was now an acknowledged critic, and had his own seat in a coffee-house, and headed a party in the pit. Minim has more vanity than ill-nature, and seldom desires to do much mischief; he will perhaps murmur a little in the ear of him that sits next him, but endeavours to influence the audience to favour, by clapping when an actor exclaims ye gods, or laments the misery of his country. By degrees he was admitted to rehearsals, and many of his friends are of opinion, that our present poets are indebted to him, for their happiest thoughts; by his contrivance the bell was rung twice in Barbarossa, and by his persuasion the author of Cleone1 concluded his play without a couplet; for what can be more absurd, said Minim, than that part of a play should be rhymed, and part written in blank verse? and by what acquisition of faculties is the speaker, who never could find rhymes before, enabled to rhyme at the conclusion of an act ?2 He is the great investigator of hidden beauties, and is particularly delighted when he finds the 1 By Robert Dodsley. It was of this play that Johnson said, when Bennet Langton had read aloud to him an act :Come, let's have some more, let's go into the slaughter-house again, Lanky. But I am afraid there is more blood than brains."-Boswell's Johnson, iv. 20. 2 Johnson, in accordance with what was, if not the invariable, at all events the almost invariable practice, concluded every act of his Irene with a rhyme. sound an echo to the sense. He has read all our poets with particular attention to this delicacy of versification, and wonders at the supineness with which their works have been hitherto perused, so that no man has found the sound of a drum in this distich; "When pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, Was beat with fist instead of a stick ;"2 and that the wonderful lines upon honour and a bubble have hitherto passed without notice: "Honour is like the glassy bubble, Which cost philosophers such trouble; In these verses, says Minim, we have two striking accommodations of the sound to the sense.4 It is impossible to utter the two lines emphatically without an act like that which they describe; bubble and trouble causing a momentary inflation of the cheeks by the retention of the breath which is afterwards forcibly emitted, as in the practice of blowing bubbles. But the greatest 1"'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense." 2 Hudibras, i. I, II. 3 "Honour is like that glassy bubble That finds philosophers such trouble, Whose least part crack'd the whole does fly, -Ib., ii. 2, 385. 4 Minim here quotes the Rambler, No. 92:-"There is nothing in the art of versifying so much exposed to the power of imagination as the accommodation of the sound to the sense." excellence is in the third line, which is crack'd in the middle to express a crack, and then shivers into monosyllables. Yet has this diamond laid neglected with common stones, and among the innumerable admirers of Hudibras the observation of this superlative passage has been reserved for the sagacity of Minim. No. 61. SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1759. M R. MINIM had now advanced himself to the zenith of critical reputation ; when he was in the pit, every eye in the boxes was fixed upon him; when he entered his coffee-house, he was surrounded by circles of candidates, who passed their novitiate of literature under his tuition: his opinion was asked by all who had no opinion of their own, and yet loved to debate and decide; and no composition was supposed to pass in safety to posterity, till it had been secured by Minim's approbation. Minim professes great admiration of the wisdom and munificence by which the academies of the Continent were raised; and often wishes for some standard of taste, for some tribunal, to which merit may appeal from caprice, prejudice, and malignity. He has formed a plan for an academy of criticism, where every work of imagination may be read before it is printed, and which shall authoritatively direct the theatres |