or philosophy of kings; and Bacon describes the effects of poetry in the most exalted terms. What is deficient of perfection in history and nature, poetry supplies; it thus erects the mind, and confers magnanimity, morality, and delight; "and therefore, says he, it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness[1]." The love of po-
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His high idea of poetry is thus philosophically explained by the great Bacon:
"So likewise I finde, some particular writings of an elegant nature, touching some of the affections, as of anger, of comfort, upon adverse accidents, of tendernesse of countenance, and other. But the poets and writers of histories are the best doctors of this knowledge; where we find painted forth with the life, how affections are kindled and incited, and how pacified and refrained; and how againe contained from act and farther degree: how
I. less unhappy in his estimate of it. In the dedication of Sir John Denham's works to Charles II. we have this remarkable passage: "One morning, waiting upon him (Charles I.) at Causham, smiling upon me, he said he could tell me some news of myself, which was that he had seen some verses of mine the evening before, and asking me when I made them, I told him two or three years since; he was pleased to say, that having never seen them before, he was afraid I had written them since my return into England, and though he liked them well, he would advise me to write no more, alleging, that when men are young, and have little else to do, they might vent the overflowing of their fancy that way; but when they were thought fit for more serious employments, if they still persisted in that course, it would look as if they minded not the way to any better." Yet this monarch, who could perceive nothing but idle puerility in poetry, was the zealous patron of architecture, sculpture, and painting; and his favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, laid out the enormous sum of 400,000l. on paintings and curiosities. But had Charles's bounty given a Shakespeare or a Milton to the public, he would have done his kingdoms infinitely more service than if he had imported into England all the pictures and all the antiques of the world. The reader who is desirous to see a philosophical character of the natural and acquired qualifications necessary to form a great poet, will find it delineated in a masterly manner, in Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, an Eastern tale, by Dr. Johnson.
