Comick Poets are of all most proper for the converse of the world: for they make it their business to draw to the life what passes in it, and to express the sentiments and passions of Men. How new a turn soever may be given to old thoughts, that sort of Poetry is very tedious which is fill'd with similes of the Morning, Sun, Moon, and Stars. Our Descriptions of a calm, and a tempestuous Sea, represent nothing which the Antients have not express'd much better. Now-a-days we have not only the same Ideas, but the very same Expressions, and Rhymes. I never hear of the harmony of Birds, but I prepare my self for purling Streams; the Shepherdesses are always lolling upon Fern, and you may sooner find a Grove without a Shade in its proper seat, than in our Verses. This must necessarily at length be very tedious: which cannot happen in Comedy, where with pleasure we see those things represented, which we may perform, and where we feel motions like those we see express'd.
A Tale of Woods, Rivers, Meadows, Fields, and Gardens, makes but a very languishing impression upon us, unless their beauties be wholly new: but what concerns Humanity, its inclinations, tendernesses, and affections, finds something in the inmost recesses of our souls prepar'd to receive it: the same nature produces and receives 'em, and they are easily transfus'd from the Actors to the Spectators.
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