be a perfect Piece of Don Quixotifm, and the Setting up a Notion that is not only utterly impracticable, but what, if it were not fo, muft deprive us of many of the Neceffary and all the Decencies of Life.

For of Arts, fome are Neceffary to our Ever-Being and Subfistance, and others to our Well-Being. If no Arts were allowable but fuch as were immediately and indifpenfably conducive to our Subfiftance, ten Parts in Eleven of the World muft become idle and useless. A Tent-Maker feems to be none of these, and yet we find it to have been the Occupation of the Apoftle of the Gentiles, and at which, he wrought, even during his Miflion, towards his Support: Nor, had the fame Saint been without the Benefit of those. more liberal, which he had learnt at the Feet of Gamaliel.

You do me but Juftice, replied Eufebia, when you imagine, that I am not for the Suppreffion of all Manner of Arts and Sciences; that were, to prefer, the dark Night of Gothick Ignorance, to the politer Day of Athens andRome. I allow all useful Mechanick Arts, and all profitable Sciences and Arts, which diftin-, guish Men from Brutes, and the civiliz'd, from the barbarous Part of Mankind. But I am for excluding idle and ufelefs Arts, which, as they fprung from Vanity and Luxury, fo they are directed to the Support of their impious Origins, withont any Manner of Benefit to human Society: And of this Number I look upon Poetry to be the Principal.

I am glad, faid Morifina, that I have not mistaken your Sentiments in what I have faid; for then I cannot be far from the Right; and yet, my dear Eufebia, I fear, if you cut off all that have proceeded from Vanity and Luxury, you will be thought no great Friend to Industry, nor have much Intereft in our trading Cities and Corporations, which owe their Opulence to little elfe, but this en paffant,

I hope therefore, that you will farther grant me, that thofe Arts which are most employed in our Actious, and their Sourfe, our Manners, which they form and regulate, are the most valuable Arts. I dare believe, that you will likewife allow, that jt is not poffible for Men in the prefent State of human Affairs, to be wholly without Diverfion, the Mind must be Tometimes releafed from the Intenfenefs of Thought, and the fatiguing Purfuit of Bufinefs, or it could never go thro' the Duties incumbent upon it.

This I will alfo grant you, faid Eufebia, because indeed it seems to carry its own Evidence in Experience; and the wife Solomon confirms it, when he tells

, that there is a Time for all things; a Time to work, and a Time to play; but then it does not follow, that thefe Relaxations fhould be either derived from, or productive of Guilt.

Submitting therefore, affum'd Morifina, Poetry to the bare Title of a meer Diverfion, it is as fuch neceffary; but it is a Diverfion that conveys Virtue to our nguarded Hours, and makes its Way, by perfwafive Pleasure, to fix it felf in the Heart, in the Midst of Our Recreations.

First, I think it may be easily made out, that there is nothing has a greater Power and Influence on the Heart, than Poetry, Reafon from its Nature afferts it, Experience avows it from Facts beyond Controverfy. So that if we can prove, that Poetry employs that Power for the Benefit of the Mind, or may, or lias employ'd it to that End, I gain my Point.

Poetry is compounded of three Arts, nay, of the Effence of three moft illuftrious Arts (or perhaps, I might justly fay, was the Parent of them) Eloquence, Mufick, and Painting. But these three Arts have given abundant Proofs of what strong Impreflions they are capable of making on the human Soul, when in their Perfection. I have, my felf, who am no great Reader, read of Examples in Greece and Italy, of this

Force

Force I fpeak of, where Perfons have fallen in Love with Figures admirably drawn by fome great Painters; nay, that the Artists themfelves have been enamour'd of their own Draughts, and doated on them as on a Mistress of real Flesh and Blood; and this has, among the Italian Painters, diftinguish'd the Pictures of the fame Hand, into thofe drawn by Study, Application, and Love; and it is obferv'd, that the Productsof the last are always the most admirable.

We have undoubted History (as I am affur'd by good Authors) of two Greeks; one was fo far in Love with the Statue of Venus, that he ventur'd his Life in being lock d into her Temple all Night, for the Opportunity of fatisfying his Paflion; and the other pin'd away, and died for being hindred from perpetually gazing on, admiring and embracing of a Statue in the City of Athens.

But left thefe be thought the Effect of Madness, more than of the Art, let any one of the least Gufto, caft his Eyes with Indifference, if he can, on the Paintings of Raphael, Rubens, or any other great Mafter, where the Paffions are delineated. No, it is impoffible to view that of our Saviour being taken down from the Crofs, done by Jordan of Antwerp, in the Hands of the Duke of Marlborough, and not have his Soul transfix'd with that Sword of Sorrow, which is faid to have pierc'd that of the Virgin Mother on that Occafion, and which is fo admirably exprefs'd in her Figure in this very Piece.

The Power of Mufick has furnish'd us with many Stories, as well as Fables. As the Cure of the Sting of the Tarantula, the Charming of the Bites of Serpents, and the Cure or Allay of an Evil Spirit, are what daily Experience proves in Italy, and what the Holy Scriptures themselves confirm to us on the lat ter Account.

The Force of Eloquence, that fo often rais'd, and appeas'd the Violence of Popular Commotions, and caus'd

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caus'd fuch Convulfions in Athens and Kome, is most fenfibly defcribd in a modera Author, whoar I have lately been reading. We need only confider Cefar, fays he, one of the greatest and wifeft of mortal Men; to fee him come on the Tribunal full of Hatred and Revenge, with a determin'd Refolution to condemn Ligarius; ye, upon the Force of Cicero's Eloquence in an Oration in his Defence) began tỏ change Countenance, turn pale, fhake to that Degree, that the Paper he held fell out of his Hands, as if he had been frighten'd with Words (obferves our Author) who was never fo with Blows, and at laft change all his Anger into Clemency, and acquit the Criminal, inftead of condemning of him.

But the ftrength of these three mighty Powers are united in Poetry, and has made it formerly to be thought to be inspired, and give it the Name of Divine; nor can it indeed be difputed, but that the Force of nice Reafoning, and the height of Conceptions and Expreffions may be, and are found in Poetry as well as in Oratory: The Life, and Spirit of Reprefentation or Picture, as much as in Painting, and the Foice of Sounds, as well as in Mufick; and how far thefe three Natural Powers, join'd together, may extend, and to what wonderful Effects, I leave to those who have throughly confidered then.

But I think it fo far from being a Doubt, whether the Force of thefe three Arts are in Poetry, that it may be easily provid, that they drew what they have from Poetry. Long before Pericles, Demofthenes, or. the other mighty Speakers of Athens; we find Neftor and Ulyffes in Homer, Mafters of all tlie Powers of Eloquence: And as Mufick confifts of short and long Sounds, and thofe rais'd higher or deprefs'd lower, it feems to my weak Judgment, that this Melodious Art was likewife born of Verfe, which as I have read, efpecially in the Greek, confifts of the fame: Evely Body has heard how Octavia swoun'd away,

on

on Virgil's reading fome Verfes in his Sixth Book of Eneids. Then for Painting, the most masterly Products of it, in all Antiquity, were drawn from Homer. Euphranor came to Athens, on Purpofe to hear a Profeffor read that Poet, that he might form his Idea of Jupiter in his Painting, from the Poet's De feription, by which he made a Portrait, that was the Wonder of after Ages. The fame hapned to Fhdias, in that admirable Statue of Jupiter, which he made after the Model, he found in the fame Place of Homer.

There is indeed no manner of Question, but that true Poetry has Force to raife the Paffions, and to allay them; to change or to extinguish them: Thus the drooping Courage of the Lacedemoniars, was reanimated by the Poetry of Tyrteus: And the Revenge and Cruelty of Phalaris, chang'd into Kindness and Esteem, by the Odes of Stefichorus.

From what I have faid, the Power of juft Poeriy, over the Heart, the Sourfe of Action, is, I hope, pretty evident; and from the Instances I have given, to prove this Power, it is not lefs plain, that it has been, and may be made nfe of to the Advantage of Vertús, and the Destruction of Vice; for the meliorating, our Manners, and the rooting out of evil Paffions, and planting a happy Tranquility in their

-Room.

All the Accufations you bring from the Fathers, and others, feem to me to be levell'd at the Abuse of the Art; which afford not the least Shadow of Reafin against the Art it felf, or its Ufe and Excellence;, nay, the more excellent a Thing is, the greater may the Abuse be, which is made of it. I confess I do not know what Authority the Fathers have a Right to, either in our Religon or Conduct, and therefore muft leave that Point to the Divines; but I remem-ber that I have fome where read, that when Julian the Apoftate, wou'd not fuffer the Chriftians to have

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the