In these Things our Taste is strangely confin'd: provided the Verses run smoothly, and the Language is soft and harmonious, we think it is fine: Let the Subject be a _Boreas_, or a _Zephyr_: Nay, I do not question but the Couplet I quoted out of the _English_ _Homer_ is reckon'd one of the finest of the Version by Ladies, and Gentleman who judge like Ladies, and who are the Nine in Ten of all Readers of Poetry. I confess, I am much more pleas'd with the following Verses, as rough and rumbling as they are, because they participate of the Roughness of the Thing which is imag'd to us, _Jumping high o'er the Shrubs of the rough Ground, Rattle the clattering Cars, and the shockt Axles bound._ When such assimilating the Sound to the Sense is not affected 'tis very agreeable; but when there is any Force or Affectation in it, 'tis puerile and distasteful. The following Description of the Poetical Fire, which several Poets were enflam'd with, seems to be somewhat deficient, and to want farther Explanation; especially where the Translator tells us, MILTON's Fire _is like a Furnace, but_ Shakespear_'s like a Fire from Heaven_: VIRGIL's like a _Kenning-Glass_, and _Lucan_'s and _Statius_'s like _Lightning_. The _Kenning-Glass_ should have given me no Manner of Disturbance: But why is _Milton_'s _Celestial Fire_ compar'd to that which destroy'd the _Three Children_; the Fire of a Furnace is boisterous and voracious, consuming whatever is within its Reach. _Milton_'s Fire, like that of the Sun, warms and enlivens; and if ever any was fetch'd from Heaven, 'twas that, which shines with so much radiant Brightness throughout his whole Poem. I was the more shockt with this Misrepresentation of _Milton_'s Fire, for that there's something burlesque in the very Expression, a _Furnace_, and one can't help being jealous that this Passage of _Hudibras_ might give the Hint for it. Talgol, _who had long possest Enflamed Rage in glowing Breast, Which now began to rage, and burn as Implacably as Flame in Furnace._ Tho' I am very far from taking _Dryden_ to be a perfect Master of Criticism, yet I do not think his Deficiency proceeded from Want of Judgement so much as from Inconsistency and Vanity, and an Opinion that he was Tyrant of _Parnassus_, and might govern by Will and Pleasure instead of Law and Reason. I have observed elsewhere that he adapts his Prefaces to the Circumstances of every Play and Poem, and very often contradicts in one what he had said in another: Nay, in his Essay on _Dramatick Poetry_, the Contradiction is within a few Lines of the Assertion, as thus; _There is no Theater in the World has any Thing so absurd as the_ English Tragi-Comedy, which he confirms by this Verse; _Atq; ursem & Pugiles media inter Carmina poscunt_.