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Nothing but this circumstance could have induced me to offer an English composition to the inspection of an host of criticks: and I trust therefore that this circumstance will plead much with the benevolent reader, in favour of those faults, which he may find in the present work. Having thus promised to publish it, I was for some time doubtful from which of the copies to translate.
I am, SIR, Yours, T.T. This to give Notice, That the three Criticks who last Sunday settled the Characters of my Lord Rochester and Boileau, in the Yard of a Coffee House in Fuller's Rents, will meet this next Sunday at the same Time and Place, to finish the Merits of several Dramatick Writers: And will also make an End of the Nature of True Sublime. No. 88. Monday, June 11, 1711. Steele.
The stories, which we now find only in remoter authours, were in his time accessible and familiar. The fable of As you like it, which is supposed to be copied from Chaucer's Gamelyn, was a little pamphlet of those times; and old Mr. Cibber remembered the tale of Hamlet in plain English prose, which the criticks have now to seek in Saxo Grammaticus.
In a short introduction to the piece, Curll explained how it happened to fall into his hands. "I am likewise to inform my Female Criticks, that they stand indebted to the entertaining Pen of Mrs. Eliza Haywood for the following History of Clarina.
Browne having now entered the world as an author, and experienced the delights of praise and molestations of censure, probably found his dread of the publick eye diminished; and, therefore, was not long before he trusted his name to the criticks a second time; for, in 1646 , he printed Inquiries into vulgar and common Errours; a work, which, as it arose not from fancy and invention, but from observation and books, and contained not a single discourse of one continued tenour, of which the latter part arose from the former, but an enumeration of many unconnected particulars, must have been the collection of years, and the effect of a design early formed and long pursued, to which his remarks had been continually referred, and which arose gradually to its present bulk by the daily aggregation of new particles of knowledge.
The beauty, adorned only with the unambitious graces of innocence and modesty, provokes, whenever she appears, a thousand murmurs of detraction. The genius, even when he endeavours only to entertain or instruct, yet suffers persecution from innumerable criticks, whose acrimony is excited merely by the pain of seeing others pleased, and of hearing applauses which another enjoys.
Another proof of his ill will to me, was the manner in which the French journals criticized my romance of Delphine, which appeared at this time; they thought proper to denounce it as immoral, and the work which had received my father's approbation was condemned by these courtier criticks.
Shakespeare engaged in dramatick poetry with the world open before him; the rules of the ancients were yet known to few; but publick judgment was unformed; he had no example of such fame as might force him upon imitation, nor criticks of such authority as might restrain his extravagance: He therefore indulged his natural disposition, and his disposition, as Rhymer has remarked, led him to comedy.
But 'tis in vain by dint of Reason or Comparison to convince the obstinate Criticks, whose Business is to find Fault, if not by a loose and gross Imagination to create them, for they must either find the Jest, or make it; and those of this sort fall to my share, they find Faults of another kind for the Men Writers.
'Now, Sir, what I would incline you to in all this, is, that you would inform the shallow Criticks and Observers upon Sorrow, that true Affliction labours to be invisible, that it is a Stranger to Ceremony, and that it bears in its own Nature a Dignity much above the little Circumstances which are affected under the Notion of Decency.
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