_Aristotle_, _Horace_, _Bossu_, _Boileau_, _Dacier_, and several other Criticks, have directed us right in the Rules of Epick and Dramatick Poetry, and _Rapin_ has done the same as to _History_, and other Parts of polite Learning. Several Attempts have been made in _England_ to instruct us, as well as the _French_ have been instructed; but far from striking out any new Lights, our _Essays_ are infinitely short of the Criticisms of our Neighbours. They teach us nothing which is not to be found there, and give us what they take thence curtailed and imperfect. 'Tis true, they have drest up their Rules in Verse, and have succeeded in it very well. There is something so just and beautiful in my Lord _Roscommon_'s Essay and Translation of _Horace_'s _Ars Poetica_, as excels any Thing in _French_ within the like Compass. I have read the late Duke of _Buckingham_'s Essay very often, but I don't think it such a perfect Piece as _Dryden_ represents it, in his long and tedious Dedication to that noble Lord before the _Æneis_. There are many Things very well thought in it, and they do not seem to be much the better for the Poetry; which is so prosaick, that if the Rhimes were pared away, it would be reduced to downright Prose. Indeed _Horace_'s Epistle to the _Piso's_ is not much more poetick; and I do not think, that the modern Criticks, like the Oracles of Old, give the greater Sanction to their Rules, for that they are put into Rhime. I dare not say any Thing of the last _Essay_ on _Criticism_ in Verse, but that if any more curious Reader has discovered in it something new, which is not in _Dryden_'s _Prefaces_, _Dedications_, and his _Essay_ on _Dramatick Poetry_, not to mention the _French_ Criticks, I should be very glad to have the Benefit of the Discovery. I was strangely surprised to meet with such a Passage, as what follows, in the Writings of so good an Author as Sir _Robert Howard_. _Preface_ to Duke of _Lerma_: "In the Difference of Tragedy and Comedy, there can be no Determination but by the _Taste_; and whoever would endeavour to like or dislike by the Rules of others, he will be as unsuccessful as if he should try to be perswaded into a Power of believing, not what he must, but what others direct him to believe." Thus are _Aristotle_, _Horace_, and all that have commented on them; thus are _Boileau_, the Lord _Roscommon_, the Duke of _Bucks_, and all the modern Criticks, confounded with a Word or two, and the Rules of Writing rendered useless and ridiculous.