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Congreve, in his letter to John Dennis, the great critic, says he despairs of answering his enquiry, "What is humour?" He not only is unwilling to define what humour is, but even to describe it. At length he ventures to say, "I take it to be a singular and unavoidable manner of doing and saying any thing, peculiar and natural to one man only, by which his speech and actions are distinguished from those of other men." He speaks more plainly, when he points out to his correspondent the character of Morose, in Ben Johnson, as a specimen of humour; and declares his opinion of Ben Johnson's plays as replete with humour. It is remarkable, that in his description of what characters are not humorous, he exempts all country clowns, sailors, tradesmen, jockeys, gamesters, &c., though his own Sailor Ben, in "Love for Love," seems, in common parlance, the most humorous of all his characters.

Congreve's Dramatic Genius.

A very acute and profound critic has well described the comic powers of Congreve: "His

*Lives of the Poets, art. Congreve

scenes exhibit not much of humour, imagery, or passion. His personages are a kind of intellectual gladiators; every sentence is to ward or strike; the contest of smartness is never intermitted; his wit is a meteor, playing to and fro with alternate corruscations." Congreve, in the before-mentioned letter to Dennis, speaking of humour in female characters of the stage, says, "I must confess I have never made any observations of what I apprehend to be true humour in women; for if any thing does seem comical or ridiculous in a woman, I think it is little more than an acquired folly, or an affectation."

Humour continued..

It is to be observed, that when an author is himself an humorist, as was Swift in England, and Fontaine in France, they may be considered as drawing their sources of humour from themselves, and so writing in character. Dr. Arbuthnot and Mr. Addison were men of grave deportment. and regulated minds, so that their humour, excel-lent as it was, claimed the superiority of being original, and the offspring of their own imagina-tions, and totally independent of any wrong bias in their own moral or intellectual characters and conduct.

Metaphorical or Figurative Language.

It is observable, that writers who possess and bring little matter to the subject on which they wish to display their talents, are very fond of dressing it in figurative language. Such a practice dazzles and confounds; yet words are the money of fools, and the counters of wise men. A splendid dress will set off an indifferent person, and give to a mean character an air of consequence. Good writers, replete with learning and sense, and conscious of their powers of information and perspicuity, use these figures of speech very sparingly, if at all—

As men of fortune venture to go plain.

Dr Young's Universal Passion.

Rules for Sonnets, Elegies, and Epitaphs.

That most judicious of all ancient critics, Quintilian, has spoken with much acuteness and propriety of lugubrious compositions: "Nunquam debet esse miseratio longa; nam cum veros dolores mitiget tempus, citius evanescat, necesse est, illa quam dicendo effinximus imago, nec speremus fore ut aliena mala quisquam diu ploret.”—Lib. 6. "Pity or the pathetic should not be prolix; for as time causes real grief to vanish, so the image of

it in our descriptions must still sooner disappear. We cannot expect that any one can long deplore the sorrows of another." This last observation contains an indisputable truth, conveyed in a vein of satirical humour, and reminds the reader of a saying of the knowing writer of Gulliver's Travels, when he addresses those around him on his bed of sickness :

Ye formal weepers for the sick,
In your last offices be quick,
And spare my absent friends the grief

To hear, yet give me no relief.

Expired to-day, entombed to-morrow,

When known, will save a double sorrow.

Cicero's and Lord Chesterfield's Letters to
their Sons.

Both these works contain precepts to instruct a young man in the duties and practices of life; and both are written to the sons of their respective writers. Cicero's advice on all occasions is full of noble sentiment against vicious indulgences of all kinds, and the most manly exhortations to culti vate those virtues which tend to render a man an example of probity, honour, and true patriotism. On the contrary, my Lord Chesterfield's Letters palliate, if they do not recommend, every sensual

pleasure; and the whole body of letters is a system of selfish depravity. Posterity will hardly believe that one writer was a heathen philosopher, and the other a christian nobleman, famed for his talents in a very brilliant æra of English literature.

Theocritus.

In his Pastorals, Pope has made an alteration, much for the better, of an image in the Greek. Theocritus introduces a lover wishing to be turned into a bee, and to buz about the chaplet which surrounded the head of his mistress; a wish surely not very attentive to the tranquillity of the lady, however it might have been gratifying to the lover. Pope has introduced a more pleasing guest into the arbour of his mistress:

Oh! were I made, by some transporting power,
The captive bird that sings within thy bow'r,
Then might my voice thy list'ning ears employ,
And I those kisses he receives enjoy.

Pastoral ii. l. 45.

1 am sorry to disagree with the ingenious and amiable Author of the Essay on Pope, &c. where the wish in Theocritus is praised for its "tenderness and elegance," and preferred to the passage

* Idyll iii. 1. 12.

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