paffages, or perfons, which the tragick poet always makes use of. Who knows but by deep thinking, another kind of comedy may be invented wholly different from the three which I have mentioned; fuch is the fruitfulness of comedy: but its courfe is already too wide for the difcovery of new fields to be wifhed, and on ground where we are already so apt to stumble, nothing is fo dangerous as novelty imperfectly underftood. This is the rock on which men have often split in every kind of purfuit; to go no further, in that of grammar and language: it is better to endeavour after novelty in the manner of expreffing common things, than to hunt for ideas out of the way, in which many a man lofes himself. The ill fuccefs of that odd compofition Tragick Comedy, a monfter wholly unknown to antiquity, fufficiently fhews the danger of novelty in attempts like thefe. Whether trage be the harder XV. To finish the parallel of the two dy or comedy dramas, a queftion may be revived equally to write. common and important, which has been oftener proposed than well decided: it is, whether comedy or tragedy be moft eafy or difficult to be well executed. I fhall not have the temerity to determine pofitively a queftion which fo many great geniuses have been afraid to decide: but if it be allowed to every literary man to give his reafon for and against a mere work of genius, confidered without respect to its good or bad tendency, I fhall in a few words give my opinion, drawn from the nature of the two works, and the qualifications they demand. Horace* propofes a queftion nearly of the fame kind: "It has been enquired, "whether a good poem be the work of art or nature: *for my part, I do not fee much to be done by art * without genius, nor by genius without knowledge. "The one is neceffary to the other, and the fuccess de"pends upon their co-operation." If we fhould endeavour to accommodate matters in imitation of this decifion of Horace, it were easy to say at once, that fuppofing two geniufes equal, one tragick and the other comick, fuppofing the art likewise equal in each, one would be as eafy or difficult as the other; but this, though satisfactory in the fimple question put by Horace, will not be fufficient here. Nobody can doubt but genius and industry contribute their part to every thing valuable, and particularly to good poetry. But if genius and study were to be weighed one against the other, in order to discover which must contribute moft to a good work, the question would become more curious, and, perhaps, very difficult of folution. Indeed, though nature must have a great part of the expense of poetry, yet no poetry Jafts long that is not very correct: the balance, therefore, feems to incline in favour of correction. For is it not known that Virgil with lefs genius than Ovid, is yet valued more by men of exquifite judgment; or, without going so far, Boileau, the Horace of our time, who compofed with fo much labour, and asked Moliere where he found his rhyme fo eafily, has faid, "If I "write four words, 1 fhall blot out three;" has not Boileau, by his polished lines, retouched and retouched a thousand times, gained the preference above the works of the fame Moliere, which are so natural, and produced by fo fruitful a genius! Horace was of that opinion, for when he is teaching the writers of his age the art of poetry, he tells them in plain terms, that Rome would VOL. III. E excel excel in writing as in arms, if the poets were not afraid of the labour, patience, and time required to polish their pieces. He thought every poem was bad that had not been brought ten times back to the anvil, and required that a work fhould be kept nine years, as a child is nine months in the womb of its mother, to reftrain that natural impatience which combine with floth and felf-love to disguise faults; fo certain is it that correction is the touch-ftone of writing. The queftion propofed comes back to the compatifon which I have been making between genius and correction, fince we are now engaged in enquiring whether there is more or lefs difficulty in writing tragedy or comedy: for as we muft compare nature and study one with another, fince they muft both concur more or less to make a poet; fo if we will compare the labours of two different minds in different kinds of writing, we muft, with regard to the authors, compare the force of genius, and with refpect to the compofition, the difficulties of the task. The genius of the tragick and comick writer will be eafily allowed to be remote from each other. Every performance, be what it will, requires a turn of mind which a man cannot confer upon himfelf: it is purely the gift of nature, which determines thofe who have it, to pursue, almost in spite of themfelves, the taste which predominates in their minds. Pafcal found in his childhood, that he was a mathematician, and Vandyke that he was born a painter. Sometimes this internal direction of the mind does not make such evident difcoveries of itself; but it is rare to find Cor neilles who have lived long without knowing that they were were poets. Corneille having once got fome notion of his powers, tried a long time on all fides to know what particular direction he fhould take. He had first made an attempt in comedy, in an age when it was yet fo grofs in France that it could give no pleasure to polite perfons. Melite was fo well received when he dreffed her out, that he gave rife to a new species of comedy and comedians. This fuccefs, which encouraged Corneille to purfue that fort of comedy of which he was the firft inventor, left him no reafon to imagine, that he was one day to produce those master-pieces of tragedy, which his muse displayed afterwards with so much splendour; and yet lefs did he imagine, that his comick pieces, which, for want of any that were preferable, were then very much in fashion, would be eclipsed by another genius formed upon the Greeks and Romans, and who would add to their excellencies improvements of his own, and that this modifh comedy, to which Corneille, as to his idol, dedicated his labours, would quickly be forgot. He wrote first Medea, and afterwards the Cid, and, by that prodigious flight of his genius, he difcovered, though late, that nature had formed him to run in no other courfe but that of Sophocles. Happy genius! that, without rule or imitation, could at once take fo high a flight; having once, as I may fay, made himself an eagle, he never afterwards quitted the path, which he had worked out for himself, over the heads of the writers of his time: yet he retained fome traces of the falfe tafte which infected the whole nation; but even in this, * * Moliere. he deferves our admiration, fince in time he changed it completely by the reflections he made, and thofe he occafioned. In fhort, Corneille was born for tragedy, as Moliere for comedy. Moliere, indeed, knew his own genius fooner, and was not lefs happy in procuring applause, though it often happened to him as to Corneille, L'Ignorance & l'Erreur à fes ndiffantes piéces But, without taking any farther notice of the time at which either came to the knowledge of his own genius, let us fuppofe that the powers of tragedy and comedy were as equally fhared between Moliere and Corneille, as they are different in their own nature, and then nothing more will remain than to compare the feveral difficulties of each compofition, and to rate those difficulties together which are comnton to both. It appears, first, that the tragick poet has in his fubject an advantage over the comick, for he takes it from history; and his rival, at least in the more elevated and fplendid comedy, is obliged to form it by his own invention. Now, it is not so easy as it might feem to find comick fubjects capable of a new and pleasing form; but history is a fource, if not inexhauftible, yet certainly fo copious as never to leave the genius a-ground. It is true, that invention feems to have a wider field than hiftory: real facts are limited in their number, but the facts which may I be |