the
æra in question, were, upon the mere face of the poll, declared better judges
than the Grecians themselves of what ought to be the manners of a tragedy
written on a Grecian story.
    I will not enter into a discussion of the espece de simplicité, which the
parterre of Paris demands, nor of the shackles with which the thirty thousand
judges have cramped their poetry, the chief merit of which, as I gather from
repeated passages in The New Commentary on Corneille, consists in vaulting in
spite of those fetters; a merit which, if true, would reduce poetry from the
lofty effort of imagination, to a puerile and most contemptible labour -
difficiles nugæ with a witness! I cannot help however mentioning a couplet,
which to my English ears always sounded as the flattest and most trifling
instance of circumstantial propriety; but which Voltaire, who has dealt so
severely with nine parts in ten of Corneille's works, has singled out to defend
in Racine;
 
De son appartement cette porte est prochaine,
Et cette autre conduit dans celui de la reine.
 
                                  In English,
 
To Cæsar's closet through this door you come,
And t'other leads to the queen's drawing-room.
 
Unhappy Shakespeare! hadst thou made Rosencrans inform his compeer Guildenstern
of the ichnography of the palace of Copenhagen, instead of presenting us with a
moral dialogue between the prince of Denmark and the grave-digger, the
illuminated pit of Paris would have been instructed a second time to adore thy
talents.
    The result of all I have said is to shelter my own daring under the cannon
of the brightest genius this country, at least, has produced. I might have
pleaded, that having created a new species of romance, I was at liberty to lay
down what rules I thought fit for the conduct of it: but I should be more proud
of having imitated, however faintly, weakly, and at a distance, so masterly a
pattern, than to enjoy the entire merit of invention, unless I could have marked
my work with genius as well as with originality. Such as it is, the public have
honoured it sufficiently, whatever rank their suffrages allot to it.
 

                         Sonnet to the Right Honourable

                                 Lady Mary Coke

The gentle maid, whose hapless tale
These melancholy pages speak;
Say, gracious lady, shall she fail
To draw the tear adown thy cheek?
 
No; never was thy pitying breast
Insensible to human woes;
Tender, though firm, it melts distrest
For weaknesses it never knows.
 
Oh! guard the marvels I relate
Of fell ambition scourg'd by fate,
From reason's