PREFACE.

THE

HE following productions have already experienced so much indulgence from the Public, that in fending them thus collected into the world, I should feel, perhaps, more of confidence than apprehenfion, were I not perfectly convinced that temporary favour is no decifive proof of real defert.

Whatever the future fate of these performances may be, I am aware that it muft depend upon themselves alone; and I fhall not trouble my reader with

any

any vain attempt to enhance their

merits, or palliate their defects.

Yet concerning one clafs of

in the collection, it may be

poems

proper to

fay a few words, as fome critics have expected to find in them much more than their author intended-I mean the effays on different arts. In these it was by no means my defign to affume the office of a legiflator; not only from a just diffidence in my own power of framing fuch laws, but from a persuasion that in poetry they seldom prove either pleasing or useful.

It may be faid, I believe, of all didactic poems, that the parts of them which do not pretend to teach, are the most productive of pleasure, and perhaps of utility.

Para

Paradoxical as this may appear, I am convinced, that in compofitions relating to the fine arts it is strictly true. A collection of precepts, tho' expreffed in the most elegant verse, can never make either a Painter or a Poet; whofe productions, to use the words of a great hiftorian, would excite lefs admiration, if they could be created by the lessons of a preceptor.

Rules of art are in general fo trite or fallacious, that they rather tend to tire and mislead than to animate and direct.-Let us confider, for instance, the Art of Poetry by Boileau, which is justly faid to be fuperior to its rivals.—If we examine the mere precepts contained in this admirable Poem, fome of them are fuch as a

Poet

Poet would certainly be neglected for obferving, and others only fuch as muft occur to every writer of a found

understanding. They are indeed embellished with all the graces of forcible and highly-polished expreffion; yet furely the most engaging and useful parts of this celebrated work, arę its lively images and characters; which, by animating the compofition, inspire an enthusiastic esteem for the art and its profeffors.

Concerning the real ufe of rules, opinions have been very different. Some have even imputed the decline of art to the accumulation of precepts; while others have thought fo highly of their power, as to imagine that no one can produce a good Poem, without

9

without being acquainted with the Poetics of Ariftotle; which is, in truth, like imagining that no one can become a parent without perufing a treatife of anatomy.

Tho' I confefs myself inclined to doubt the efficacy of precepts towards forming a great artist of any kind, I am far from intending to condemn the poems, that have appeared on a preceptive plan.-Many of these are written in a manner fo fprightly, and with fuch an elegant felicity of expreffion, that if they do not afford to young ftudents that new and folid instruction which they profefs to deliver, they are at least highly pleafing; and certainly very ferviceable to that more numerous clafs of readers, the critics and connoiffeurs.

It