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The truth is, I have so far engaged myself in a bold Epilogue to this play, wherein I have somewhat taxed the former writing, that it was necessary for me either not to print it, or to show that I could defend it. Yet I would so maintain my opinion of the present age, as not to be wanting in my veneration for the past; I would ascribe to dead authors their just praises, in those things wherein they have excelled us; and in those wherein we contend with them for the pre-eminence, I would acknowledge our advantages to the age, and claim no victory from our wit. This being what I have proposed to myself, I hope I shall not be thought arrogant, when I enquire into their errours. For

discrediting his predecessors; and this Epilogue he has defended by a long Postscript. He had promised a Second Dialogue, in which he should more fully treat of the virtues and faults of the English poets, who have written in the dramatick, epick, or lyrick way. [See p. 32.] This promise was never formally performed; but with respect to the dramatick writers, he has given in his prefaces, and in this Postscript, something equivalent; but his purpose being to exalt himself by the comparison, he shews faults distinctly, and only praises excellence in general terms."-Johnson's Life of DRYDEN.

Langbaine informs us, that he had seen the two parts of THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA acted with great applause. His continuator, Gildon, however, adds a curious circumstance; that "the success of these plays was not owing to the excellency of the poet's performance, but to the extravagance; for he had always observed them to have the effect of comedy on the audience."

we live in an age so sceptical, that as it determines little, so it takes nothing from antiquity on trust; and I profess to have no other ambition in this Essay, than that poetry may not go backward, when all other arts and sciences are advancing. Whoever censures me for this enquiry, let him hear his character from Horace :

Ingeniis non ille favet, plauditque sepultis,
Nostra sed impugnat; nos nostraque lividus odit.
He favours not dead wits, but hates the living.

It was upbraided to that excellent poet, that he was an enemy to the writings of his predecessor Lucilius, because he had said, Lucilium lutulentum fluere, that he ran muddy; and that he ought to have retrenched from his Satires many unnecessary verses. But Horace makes Lucilius himself to justify him from the imputation of envy, by telling you that he would have done the same, had he lived in an age which was more refined :

Si foret hoc nostrum fato delapsus in ævum,
Detereret sibi multa, recideret omne quod ultra
Perfectum traheretur: &c.

And, both in the whole course of that Satire, and in his most admirable Epistle to Augustus, he makes it his business to prove that antiquity alone is no plea for the excellency of a poem; but that one age learning from another, the last (if we can suppose an equality of wit in the writers,) has the advantage of knowing more and better than the former. And this I think is the state of the

question in dispute. It is therefore my part to make it clear, that the language, wit, and conversation of our age, are improved and refined above the last; and then it will not be difficult to infer, that our plays have received some part of those advantages.

In the first place, therefore, it will be necessary to state in general, what this refinement is, of which we treat; and that I think will not be defined amiss, An improvement of our Wit, Language, and Conversation; or, an alteration in them for the better.

To begin with Language. That an alteration is lately made in ours, or since the writers of the last age, (in which I comprehend Shakspeare, Fletcher, and Jonson,) is manifest. Any man who reads those excellent poets, and compares their language with what is now written, will sce it almost in every line. But, that this is an improvement of the language, or an alteration for the better, will not so easily be granted. For many are of a contrary opinion, that the English tongue was then in the height of its perfection; that from Jonson's time to ours it has been in a continual declination; like that of the Romans from the age of Virgil to Statius, and so downward to Claudian of which, not only Petronius, but Quintilian himself so much complains, under the

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2 Who the author of this deservedly admired Dialogue was, has long been a question among the learned. Beside

person of Secundus, in his famous Dialogue De Causis corrupta Eloquentiæ.

But to shew that our language is improved, and that those people have not a just value for the age in which they live, let us consider in what the refinement of a language principally consists: that is, either in rejecting such old words or phrases

Quintilian, it has been attributed to Suetonius, and to Tacitus; and Mr. Melmoth, the elegant translator of this piece, is decidedly of opinion that it was not the production of any one of those celebrated writers. It was, however, undoubtedly written by Tacitus; as is proved decisively by a slight circumstance, not noticed by any of the ancient criticks, and first pointed out by my learned friend, Dr. Joseph Stock, formerly fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, in his excellent edition of Tacitus, in four volumes, 8vo. 1788. This proof is derived from the following passages in the Dialogue on Oratory, compared with one of Pliny's Epistles.

In the ninth section of the Dialogue, we find these words:

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Adjice, quod poetis, si modo dignum aliquid elaborare et effingere velint, relinquenda conversatio amicorum, et jucunditas urbis, deserenda cætera officia, atque ut ipsi dicunt, in nemora et lucos, id est, in solitudinem recedendum est."

Again, in sect. 12.

Nemora vero et luci, et secretum iter, quod Aper increpabat, tantam mihi afferunt voluptatem, ut inter præcipuos carminum fructos numerem."

Pliny, (EPIST. lib. ix. ep. 10.) in a letter to TACITUS, evidently referring to the foregoing passages, thus addresses him " Itaque poemata quiescunt, que TU inter nemora et lucos commodissime perfici putas."

which are ill sounding or improper, or in admitting new, which are more proper, more sounding, and more significant.

The reader will easily take notice, that when I speak of rejecting improper words and phrases, I mention not such as are antiquated by custom only; and, as I may say, without any fault of theirs. For in this case the refinement can be but accidental; that is, when the words and phrases which are rejected, happen to be improper. Neither would I be understood, when I speak of impropriety of language, either wholly to accuse the last age, or to excuse the present; and least of all, myself; for all writers have their imperfections and failings; but I may safely conclude in the general, that our improprieties are less frequent, and less gross than theirs. One testimony of this is undeniable; that we are the first who have observed them; and, certainly, to observe errours is a great step to the correcting of them. But, malice and partiality set apart, let any man who understands English, read diligently the works of Shakspeare and Fletcher; and I dare undertake that he will find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense :3

3 These notorious flaws in sense, I conceive, will be found only by those who are not well acquainted with the phraseology of Shakspeare's time, as undoubtedly our author was not when he wrote this piece. He tells us himself in his Preface to Juvenal, which is dated August 18, 1692, that about twenty years before, on the suggestion

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