A fashionable French critic diverts himself with imagining “what a person, who comes fresh from reading Mr. Addison and Mr. Locke, would be apt to think of Tasso’s Enchantments[54].”

The English reader will, perhaps, smile at seeing these two writers so coupled together: and, with the critic’s leave, we will put Mr. Locke out of the question. But if he be desirous to know what a reader of Mr. Addison would pronounce in the case, I can undertake to give him satisfaction.

Speaking of what Mr. Dryden calls, the Fairy way of writing, “Men of cold fancies and philosophical dispositions, says he, object to this kind of poetry, that it has not probability enough to affect the imagination. But—many are prepossest with such false opinions, as dispose them to believe these particular delusions: at least, we have all heard so many pleasing relations in favour of them, that we do not care for seeing through the falsehood, and willingly give ourselves up to so agreeable an imposture.” [Spect. No 419.]

Apply, now, this sage judgment of Mr. Addison to Tasso’s Enchantments; and you see that a falsehood convict is not to be pleaded against a supposed belief, or even the slightest hear-say.

So little account does this wicked poetry make of philosophical or historical truth: all she allows us to look for, is poetical truth; a very slender thing indeed, and which the poet’s eye, when rolling in a fine frenzy, can but just lay hold of. To speak in the philosophic language of Mr. Hobbes, it is something much beyond the actual bounds, and only within the conceived possibility of nature.

But the source of bad criticism, as universally of bad philosophy, is the abuse of terms. A poet, they say, must follow nature; and by nature we are to suppose can only be meant the known and experienced course of affairs in this world. Whereas the poet has a world of his own, where experience has less to do, than consistent imagination.

He has, besides, a supernatural world to range in. He has Gods, and Fairies, and Witches, at his command: and,

— — — —O! who can tell
The hidden pow’r of herbes, and might of magic spell?
Spenser, B. V. C. ii.

Thus, in the poet’s world, all is marvellous and extraordinary; yet not unnatural in one sense, as it agrees to the conceptions that are readily entertained of these magical and wonder-working natures.

This trite maxim of following Nature is further mistaken, in applying it indiscriminately to all sorts of poetry.