they will always be; such a taste, as puts the seal of immortality to those works in which it is discovered; a taste, so necessary, that, without it, we may be certain, that the greatest powers of nature will long continue in a state below themselves; for no man ought to allow himself to be flattered or seduced, by the example of some men of genius, who have rather appeared to despise this taste, than to despise it in reality.  It is true, that excellent originals have given occasion, without any fault of their own, to very bad copies.  No man ought severely to ape either the ancients or the moderns; but, if it was necessary, to run into an extreme of one side or the other, which is never done by a judicious and well-directed mind, it would be better for a wit, as for a painter, to enrich himself by what he can take from the ancients, than to grow poor by taking all from his own stock; or openly to affect an imitation of those moderns, whose more fertile genius has produced beauties, peculiar to themselves, and which themselves only can display with grace:  beauties of that peculiar kind, that they are not fit to be imitated by others; though, in those who first invented them, they may be justly esteemed, and in them only[5].

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] View of the immorality and profaneness of the English stage, by
    Jeremy Collier. 1698.—­Ed.

[2] See St. Paul, upon the subject of the Ignoto Deo.

[3] It is the licentiousness of the mimi and pantomimes, against which
    the censure of the holy fathers particularly breaks out, as against
    a thing irregular and indecent, without supposing it much connected
    with the cause of religion.

[4] Eschylus, in my opinion, as well as the other poets, his
    contemporaries, retained the chorus, not merely because it was the
    fashion, but because, examining tragedy to the bottom, they found it
    not rational to conceive, that an action, great and splendid, like
    the revolution of a state, could pass without witnesses.

[5] Much light has been thrown on the Greek drama since the labours of
    Dr. Johnson, and the pere Brumoy.  The papers on the subject, in
    Cumberland’s Observer, Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Literature,
    Mr. Mitchell’s Dissertations, in his translation of Aristophanes,
    and the essays on the Greek Orators and Dramatists, in the Quarterly
    Review, may be mentioned as among the most popular attempts to
    illustrate this pleasing department of the Belles-Lettres.—­Ed.

DEDICATIONS.

Dr. James’s Medicinal Dictionary, 3 vols. folio. 1743.

To Dr. Mead.

SIR,

That the Medicinal Dictionary is dedicated to you, is to be imputed only to your reputation for superiour skill in those sciences, which I have endeavoured to explain and facilitate; and you are, therefore, to consider this address, if it be agreeable to you, as one of the rewards of merit; and, if otherwise, as one of the inconveniencies of eminence.