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versation was full of gaiety and humour, the two citizens were vaftly delighted and one of them, at parting, ftopt Boileau with this compliment, "I have travelled with Doctors of the Sorbonne, and even with Religious; but I never heard fo many fine things faid before; en verite vous parlez cent fois mieux` qu' un PREDICATEUR."

IT

II. Corneille found the French stage in a barbarous state, and advanced it to great Perfection: Racine has not fupported it in the perfection in which he found it.

III. The characters of Corneille are true, though they are not common: The characters of Racine are not true, but only fo far forth as they are common.

IV. Sometimes the characters of Corneille, are, in fome refpects, false and unnatural, in that they are noble and fingular : Those of Racine are often, in fome refpects, low, on account of their being natural and ordinary.

V. He that has a noble heart would chufe to resemble the heroes of Corneille: He that has a little heart is pleased to find his own resemblance in the heroes of Racine.

VI. We carry, from hearing the pieces of the One, a defire to be virtuous: And we carry the pleasure of finding men like ourselves in foibles and weakneffes, from the pieces of the Other.

VII. The

Ir is but juftice to add, that the fourteen fucceeding verses in the poem before us, containing the character of a TRUE CRITIC, are superior to any thing in Boileau's Art of Poetry :

VII. The Tender and the Graceful of Racine is sometimes to be found in Corneille: The Grand and Sublime of Corneille is never to be found in Racine.

VIII. Racine has painted only the French and the present age, even when he defigned to paint another age, and other nations: We see in Corneille, all those ages and all those nations, that he intended to paint.

IX. The number of the pieces of Corneille is much greater than that of Racine: Corneille, notwithstanding, has made fewer tautologies and repetitions than Racine has made.

X. In the paffages where the verfification of Corneille is good, it is more bold, more noble, and, at the same time, as pure and as finished as that of Racine; but it is not preserved in this degree of beauty; and that of Racine is always equally fupported.

XI. Authors inferior to Racine have written fuccessfully after him, in his own way: No author, not even Racine himself, dared to attempt, after Corneille, that kind of writing which was peculiar to him.

This comparison, of the juftness of which the reader is left to judge, is faid greatly to have irritated Boileau, the invariable friend and defender of Racine. It may be remarked, that Boileau had mentioned Fontenelle with contempt, in a fianza

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Poetry: from which, however, POPE has borrowed many obfervations.

37. The mighty STAGYRITE firft left the shore, Spread all his fails, and durft the deep explore. He steer'd securely, and discover'd far,

Led by the light of the Mæonian star *.

A NOBLE and just character of the first and the best of critics! And fufficient to repress the fashionable and naufeous petulance of feveral impertinent moderns, who have attempted to difcredit this great and ufeful

that originally concluded his Ode to the King, at present omitted. These were the lines.

J'aime mieux nouvel Icare
Dans les airs cherchant Pindare
Tomber du ciel le plus haut;
Que loué de Fontenelle,
Razer, craintive hirondelle,
La terre, comme Perault.

This ode was parodied in France; but not with such incomparable humour, as by our Prior, in England.

To these remarks of Fontenelle may be added what Voltaire fays, with his ufual vivacity and brevity; " Corneille alone formed himself; but Louis XIV. Colbert, Sophocles, and Euripides, all of them contributed to form Racine."

* Ver. 646.

writer !

writer. Whoever furveys the variety and perfection of his productions, all delivered in the chastest style, in the cleareft order, and the most pregnant brevity, is amazed at the immenfity of his genius. His logic, however at prefent neglected for those redundant and verbofe fyftems, which took their rife from Locke's Effay on the Human Understanding, is a mighty effort of the mind: in which are discovered the principal fources of the art of reasoning, and the dependencies of one thought on another; and where, by the different combinations he hath made of all the forms the understanding can affume in reasoning, which he hath traced for it, he hath fo clofely confined it, that it cannot depart from them, without arguing inconfequentially. His Phyfics contain many useful obfervations, particularly his History of Animals; to affist him in which, Alexander gave orders, that creatures of different climates and countries fhould, at a great expence, be brought to him, to pass under his infpection. His Morals are perhaps the pureft fyftem in antiquity.

and

His Politics are a moft valuable monument of the civil wisdom of the ancients; as they preserve to us the defcription of feveral governments, and particularly of Crete and Carthage, that otherwife would have been unknown. But of all his compofitions, his Rhetoric and Poetics are most complete. No writer has shewn a greater penetration into the receffes of the human heart, than this philofopher, in the second book of his Rhetoric; where he treats of the different manners and paffions, that distinguish each different condition of man; and from whence Horace plainly took his famous defcription, in the Art of Poetry *. La Bruyere, Rochefoucault, and Montaigne himself, are not to be compared to him in this refpect. No fucceeding writer on eloquence, not even Tully, has added any thing new or important on this fubject. His Poetics, which I fuppofe are here by POPE chiefly referred to, feem to have been written for the use of that prince, with whofe education Ariftotle was honoured,

* Ver. 157.

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