DIALOGUE II.

Hor.

Afpafia, Hartenfius, Eugenio,

T

HE moment, Eugenio, you left us yesterday, Afpaña betook herself to her Shakespear: her eagerness to apply the hints you have given her, is not to be fatisfied; and she seems to enjoy her discoveries, like one who had suddenly acquired a new sense.

Afp. Such advantages were not intended for us poor women; even Angels are partial, as you reprefent them: thus Michael, when he meant to enlighten Adam, fays to him,

Afcend

This hill; let Eye (for I have drench'd her

eyes)

Here fleep below, while thou to forefight wak'ft.

So it is you men deal with us; you cut us off from the means of knowlege, and then wonder at our ignorance. Good fenfe you have appropriated, by calling it manly. Taste, indeed, you allow us; but you keep it in fubjection to your fuperior genius

Eng.

Eug. WERE you to examine thoroughly the difference between Taste and Genius, you would have the fatisfaction to find, that there are few men who are entitled to a fubmiffion from you on this account.

Afp. LET me, Eugenio, owe this obligation, as I have done many others, to

you.

Eug. As our conversation yesterday turned intirely on poetry, we may preserve a connexion, by confidering the qualities to be examined, folely as they relate to that art. When they are once determined in any one mode, it will be eafy to extend them to eloquence in general, and from thence to every art in which they are naturally exerted.

A POET

*A POET illuftrates one object by a comparison with another: he discovers a just and beautiful relation between two ideas : this is Genius. Afpafia feels in its whole force the merit of that invention; this is Tafte. Now, it is evident, that there must be a great difference between the perceiving a beauty that is difcovered for us, and the making that discovery ourselves: accordingly, we are affured by experience, that a man of quick perception, may be of flow invention; and that a lively reader may be a dull poet.

Hor. We are fo apt to over-rate our own talents, that I do not at all wonder, that fo many men fhould, in themfelves, mistake Senfibility for Genius. Are we not too much encouraged in this error by the vanity of Critics and Commentators, who are con

tinually

tinually infinuating to us, that they par take, in some measure, of that Divinity, which they attribute to their poets.

Eug. UNHAPPILY, they fupport their pretenfion by the [n] authority of Cicero, who was himself the strongest exception to it. In short, Hortenfio, the best Critic, confidered merely as fuch, is but a dependent, a fort of planet to his original; he does no more than receive and reflect that light, of which his poet is the fountain.

Afp. IF

you mean that I should have a clear conception of Genius, you must defcend from these exalted ideas to its effects.

[*] Quorum omnium interpretes, ut Grammatici Poetarum, proxime ad eorum, quos interpretantur, divi nationem videntur accedere

Cic. de Divin. 1. i.

Eug