Well, _he is now fettered in business of more unpleasant nature_ [p. 574]. The Muses have lost him, but the Commonwealth gains by it. The corruption of a Poet is the generation of a Statesman. _He will not venture again into the Civil Wars of Censure_ [Criticism]. _Ubi ... nullos habitura triumphos_. If he had not told us, he had left the Muses; we might have half suspected it by that word, _ubi_, which does not any way belong to _them_, in that place. The rest of the verse is indeed LUCAN's: but that _ubi_, I will answer for it, is his own. Yet he has another reason for this disgust of Poesy. For he says, immediately after, that _the manner of Plays which are now in most esteem, is beyond his power to perform_ [p. 574]. To _perform_ the _manner_ of a thing, is new English to me. _However he condemns not the satisfaction of others, but rather their unnecessary understanding; who, like SANCHO PANZA's Doctor, prescribe too strictly to our appetites. For_, says he, _in the difference of Tragedy and Comedy and of Farce itself; there can be no determination but by the taste; nor in the manner of their composure_. We shall see him, now, as great a Critic as he was a Poet: and the reason why he excelled so much in Poetry will be evident; for it will have proceeded from the exactness of his Judgement. _In the difference of Tragedy, Comedy, and Farce itself; there can be no determination but by the taste_. I will not quarrel with the obscurity of this phrase, though I justly might: but beg his pardon, if I do not rightly understand him. If he means that there is no essential difference betwixt Comedy, Tragedy, and Farce; but only what is made by people's taste, which distinguishes one of them from the other: that is so manifest an error, that I need lose no time to contradict it. Were there neither Judge, Taste, or Opinion in the world; yet they would differ in their natures. For the Action, Character, and Language of Tragedy would still be great and high: that of Comedy, lower and more familiar. Admiration would be the Delight of the one: Satire, of the other. I have but briefly touched upon these things; because, whatever his words are, I can scarce[ly] imagine that _he who is always concerned for the true honour of Reason, and would have no spurious issue fathered upon her_ [p. 578], should mean anything so absurd, as to affirm _that there is no difference between Comedy and Tragedy, but what is made by taste only_: unless he would have us understand the Comedies of my Lord L. [?]; where the First Act should be _Potages_, the Second, _Fricasses &c._, and the Fifth, a _chère entière_ of women. I rather guess, he means that betwixt one Comedy or Tragedy and another; there is no other difference but what is made by the liking or disliking of the audience. This is, indeed, a less error than the former; but yet it is a great one.