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FRENCH TECHNICAL TERMS.

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the better of it, till I am informed by the Tower guns that the place is surrendered. I do indeed make some allowance for this part of the war, fortifications having been foreign inventions, and upon that account abounding in foreign terms. But when we have won battles, which may be described in our own language, why are our papers filled with so many unintelligible exploits, and the French obliged to lend us a part of their tongue before we can know how they are conquered? They must be made accessary to their own disgrace, as the Britons were formerly so 10 artificially wrought in the curtain of the Roman theatre, that they seemed to draw it up, in order to give the spectators an opportunity of seeing their own defeat celebrated upon the stage: for so Mr. Dryden has translated that verse in Virgil:

Purpurea intexti tollunt aulæa Britanni.

GEORG. iii. 25.

Which interwoven Britons seem to raise,

And shew the triumph that their shame displays.

The histories of all our former wars are transmitted to us in our vernacular idiom, to use the phrase of a great modern 20 critic ". I do not find in any of our chronicles that Edward III. ever reconnoitered the enemy, though he often discovered the posture of the French, and as often vanquished them in battle. The Black Prince passed many a river without the help of pontoons, and filled a ditch with faggots as successfully as the generals of our times do it with fascines. Our commanders lose half their praise, and our people half their joy, by means of those hard words and dark expressions in which our newspapers do so much abound. I have seen many a prudent citizen, after having read every article, enquire of his next neighbour what news the 30 mail had brought.

I remember, in that remarkable year, when our country was delivered from her greatest fears and apprehensions, and raised to the greatest height of gladness it had ever felt since it was a nation,—I mean the year of Blenheim,—I had the copy of a letter sent me out of the country, which was written from a young gentleman in the army to his father, a man of a good estate and plain sense: as the letter was very modishly chequered with this modern military eloquence, I shall present my reader with a copy of it.

'SIR,

'Upon the junction of the French and Bavarian armies, they took post behind a great morass, which they thought impracticable. Our general the next day sent a party of horse to reconnoitre them from a little hauteur, at about a quarter of an hour's distance from the army, who returned again to the camp unobserved through several defiles, in one of which they met with a party of French that had been marauding, and made them all prisoners at discretion. The day after, a drum arrived 10 at our camp, with a message which he would communicate to none but the general; he was followed by a trumpet, who they say behaved himself very saucily, with a message from the duke of Bavaria. The next morning our army, being divided into two corps, made a movement towards the enemy; you will hear in the public prints how we treated them, with the other circumstances of that glorious day". I had the good fortune to be in that regiment that pushed the Gens d'Armes. Several French battalions, who some say were a corps de réserve, made a show of resistance; but it only proved a gasconade, for upon our 20 preparing to fill up a little fosse, in order to attack them, they beat the chamade, and sent us charte blanche. Their commandant, with a great many other general officers, and troops without number, are made prisoners of war, and will I believe give you a visit in England, the cartel not being yet settled. Not questioning but those particulars will be very welcome to you, I congratulate you upon them, and am your most dutiful son,' &c.

The father of the young gentleman upon the perusal of the letter found it contained great news, but could not guess what 30 it was. He immediately communicated it to the curate of the parish, who upon the reading of it, being vexed to see any thing he could not understand, fell into a kind of a passion, and told him that his son had sent him a letter that was neither fish, flesh, nor good red-herring. 'I wish,' says he, 'the captain may be compos mentis; he talks of a saucy trumpet, and a drum that carries messages; then who is this Charte Blanche? He must either banter us, or he is out of his senses.' The father, who always looked upon the curate as a learned man, began to fret inwardly at his son's usage, and producing a letter which he had

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written to him about three posts before, 'You see here,' says he, 'when he writes for money he knows how to speak intelligibly enough; there's no man in England can express himself clearer, when he wants a new furniture for his horse.' In short, the old man was so puzzled upon the point, that it might have fared ill with his son, had he not seen all the prints about three days after filled with the same terms of art, and that Charles only wrote like other men.-L.

No. 253. Against Detraction: the author of the Essay on Criticism chargeable with this fault; critique on that poem.

Indignor quicquam reprehendi, non quia crasse
Compositum illepideve putetur, sed quia nuper.

HOR. Epist. i. 2. 75.

I lose my patience, and I own it too,

When works are censured, not as bad, but new.

POPE.

There is nothing which more denotes a great mind, than the 10 abhorrence of envy and detraction. This passion reigns more among bad poets than among any other set of men.

As there are none more ambitious of fame than those who are conversant in poetry, it is very natural for such as have not succeeded in it to depreciate the works of those who have. For since they cannot raise themselves to the reputation of their fellow writers, they must endeavour to sink it to their own pitch, if they would still keep themselves upon a level with them.

The greatest wits that ever were produced in one age lived together in so good an understanding, and celebrated one another 20 with so much generosity, that each of them receives an additional lustre from his contemporaries, and is more famous for having lived with men of so extraordinary a genius, than if he had himself been the sole wonder of the age. I need not tell my reader that I here point at the reign of Augustus, and I believe he will be of my opinion, that neither Virgil nor Horace would have gained so great a reputation in the world, had they not been the friends and admirers of each other. Indeed all the great writers of that age, for whom singly we have so great an esteem, stand up together as vouchers for one another's reputation. But at 30 the same time that Virgil was celebrated by Gallus, Propertius,

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Horace, Varius, Tucca, and Ovid, we know that Bavius and Mævius were his declared foes and calumniators.

In our own country a man seldom sets up for a poet, without attacking the reputation of all his brothers in the art. The ignorance of the moderns, the scribblers of the age, the decay of poetry, are the topics of detraction, with which he makes his entrance into the world. But how much more noble is the fame that is built on candour and ingenuity, according to those beautiful lines of Sir John Denham, in his poem on Fletcher's works!

But whither am I stray'd? I need not raise
Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise:
Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built,
Nor needs thy juster title the foul guilt

Of Eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,

Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain.

I am sorry to find that an author, who is very justly esteemed among the best judges, has admitted some strokes of this nature into a very fine poem; I mean The Art of Criticism", which was published some months since, and is a master-piece in its kind. 20 The observations follow one another like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been requisite in a prose author. They are some of them uncommon, but such as the reader must assent to, when he sees them explained with that elegance and perspicuity in which they are delivered. As for those which are the most known and the most received, they are placed in so beautiful a light, and illustrated with such apt allusions, that they have in them all the graces of novelty, and make the reader who was before acquainted with them still more convinced of their truth and 30 solidity. And here give me leave to mention what Monsieur Boileau has so very well enlarged upon in the preface to his works, that wit and fine writing do not consist so much in advancing things that are new, as in giving things that are known an agreeable turn. It is impossible for us, who live in the latter ages of the world, to make observations in criticism, morality, or in any art or science, which have not been touched upon by others. We have little else left us but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights. If a reader examines Horace's Art of Poetry, 40 he will find but very few precepts in it which he may not meet

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THE ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

393

with in Aristotle, and which were not commonly known by all the poets of the Augustan age. His way of expressing and applying them, not his invention of them, is what we are chiefly to admire. For this reason I think there is nothing in the world so tiresome as the works of those critics, who write in a positive dogmatic way, without either language, genius, or imagination. If the reader would see how the best of the Latin critics writ, he may find their manner very beautifully described in the characters of Horace, Petronius, Quintilian 1, and Longinus, as they are 10 drawn in the essay of which I am now speaking.

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Since I have mentioned Longinus, who in his reflexions has given us the same kind of sublime which he observes in the several passages that occasioned them, I cannot but take notice, that our English author has after the same manner exemplified several of his precepts in the very precepts themselves. I shall produce two or three instances of this kind. Speaking of the insipid smoothness which some readers are so much in love with, he has the following verses:

These equal syllables alone require,

Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire,
While expletives their feeble aid do join,

And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.

The gaping of the vowels in the second line, the expletive do in the third, and the ten monosyllables in the fourth, give such a beauty to this passage, as would have been very much admired in an ancient poet. The reader may observe the following lines in the same view.

A needless Alexandrine ends the song,

That like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along1.

30 And afterwards :

'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,

And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;

About the ninth century Latin in France ceased to be spoken, and was succeeded by the romance tongue, a mixture of Frank and bad Latin. The second poem published in this tongue was called The Romance of Alexander the Great, composed by four authors, one of whom was Alexander of Paris, the most celebrated. Before this time all the romances were composed in verses of eight syllables, but in this piece the four authors used verses of twelve syllables. And this was the origin of the Alexandrine verses, either from the subject Alexander the Great, or from Alexander the French poet.' (Note in Tonson and Draper's ed. of 1766.)

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