kinds, and I would instance in Shakespeare of the former, of your
lordship in the latter sort.

Thus I might safely confine myself to my native country. But if I
would only cross the seas, I might find in France a living Horace
and a Juvenal in the person of the admirable Boileau, whose numbers
are excellent, whose expressions are noble, whose thoughts are just,
whose language is pure, whose satire is pointed and whose sense is
close. What he borrows from the ancients, he repays with usury of
his own in coin as good and almost as universally valuable: for,
setting prejudice and partiality apart, though he is our enemy, the
stamp of a Louis, the patron of all arts, is not much inferior to
the medal of an Augustus Caesar. Let this be said without entering
into the interests of factions and parties, and relating only to the
bounty of that king to men of learning and merit--a praise so just
that even we, who are his enemies, cannot refuse it to him.

Now if it may be permitted me to go back again to the consideration
of epic poetry, I have confessed that no man hitherto has reached or
so much as approached to the excellences of Homer or of Virgil; I
must farther add that Statius, the best versificator next to Virgil,
knew not how to design after him, though he had the model in his
eye; that Lucan is wanting both in design and subject, and is
besides too full of heat and affectation; that amongst the moderns,
Ariosto neither designed justly nor observed any unity of action, or
compass of time, or moderation in the vastness of his draught: his
style is luxurious without majesty or decency, and his adventures
without the compass of nature and possibility. Tasso, whose design
was regular, and who observed the roles of unity in time and place
more closely than Virgil, yet was not so happy in his action: he