[ 4t ] 



content with direding me by a marginal diftinflion*, where I 

 am to admire ; and the other forgets his author in the triumph 

 of learned pride over the blunders of a former commentator. 

 The meaning of a word, or the conftrudion of a fentence, has 

 given birth to ample comments ; while thofe ftrokes of nature 

 which give Shakefpear an abfolute power over the human breaft, 

 are either left unnoticed, or pointed out as the objeds of un- 

 meaning admiration. For my own part, while my foul is hurried 

 along by the magic of poetry through the regions of pity, indig- 

 nation, aftonifhment or terror ; when my heart expands to grafp 

 a fublime image, and furrenders all its faculties to the guidance 

 of a mafter's hand, at fuch moments I cannot thank the man 

 who forces me to defcend to the niceties of verbal criticifm f, or 



to 



" * The moft fliining paflages are diftingulflied by coinmas in the margin ; and 

 «• where the beauty lay not in particulars but in the whole, a Jlar is prefixed to the 

 " fcene." Mr. Pope's preface. 



•j- What is generally called verbal criticifm is, I believe, more properly the office of 

 a grammarian or collator of manufcripts than of a critic. Yet there is a fpecies of 

 it which has a juft title to the name, as it does not terminate in words, however 

 words may be its immediate objeft ; I mean that fpecies of criticifm which delivers 

 rules for the JlruBure of fentences ; rules to which the antients paid much more 

 attention than moft of our Englifh writers ; and which many, I believe, have neglefted 

 as Inapplicable to modern languages. Whether this opinion be founded in trutli I 

 fhall not here enquire ; but the reafon why I look upon this fubjefl: to involve in 

 fome meafure the conftitution of the human mind, and therefore to fall under the 

 critic's province, will appear by an example. I fhall take it from the 2d philippic of 

 Cicero, in which the following fentence occurs : " Utinam, Cn. Pompei, cum C. Ctfare 

 " focietatem, atit nunquam coiffes, out nunquam diremiffes, fuit alterum graviiatis, alteriim 

 " pricdenti^ tiia." In one of our Engllfli tranflations it runs thus : " I wiih, O 

 " Pompey, that you never had contrafted, or never had broken your friendfhip with 



( F ) " Csefar. 



