But if it conduces to the bettering of behaviour and the handsome carriage of a man's person among strangers; if it be for a harmless exercise, for a recreation merely, or to express inoffensively a justifiable joy, I see not why it should be condemned. It is good for a man so' to dance, as not to put his friends, that shall behold him, out of countenance, or that he need be ashamed if his enemy should stand by. Some men have an averseness to it, and these it seldom becomes.

Frederic the Third used often to say, he had rather be sick of a fever, than endeavour to dance. And most martial men are rather for the drum and trumpet, than the lute and viol. If it were absolutely ill in itself, or if the ill that seems to adhere were in itself inseparable from it, it were better all were gone, than for the greatest pleasure to keep the least of mischief. But I cannot think that all must sin, if they come but once to humor an instrument, or that there cannot be dancing without a danger to chastity. I had rather hold with Aristippus ;

"In Liberi patris sacris

Mens, quæ pudica est, nescit corrumpier."

"The truly modest will,

In Bacchus' orgies, can be modest still."

And albeit some of the Fathers have decla ed high against this recreation, yet I take it be as it was rudely and lasciviously used by vulgar, and with the infective Pagans of the times.

But surely, as solemn entertainme are among great persons, and meetings of lo and friendship among persons of quality, the is nothing more modest, more decent, or mo civil; where even the least inclination to wa tonness is held a mark of rudeness; and ha ing so many eyes upon them, any place or tim indeed, were fitter for such purposes than thes To conclude upon this theme, I take it to like usury; something difficult to be kept the mean; easy to be let into excess; and a most by all nations at once decried and pra tised.

OF POETS AND POETRY.

SURELY he was a little wanton with hi leisure, that first invented poetry. It is but play which makes words dance in the evennes of a cadency; yet without doubt, being a har mony, it is nearer to the mind than prose; fo that itself is a harmony in height. But the words being rather the drossy part, concei

I take to be the principal. And here, though it digresseth from truth, it flies above her, making her more rare by giving curious raiment to her nakedness.

The name the Grecians gave the men that wrote thus, showed how much they honored it. They called them Makers; and had some of them had power to put their conceits in act, how near would they have come to Deity! And for the virtues of men, they rest not on the bare demeanour, but slide into imagination; so proposing things above us, they kindle the reader to wonder and imitation. And certainly, poets that write thus Plato never meant to banish. His own practice shows, he excluded not all. He was content to hear Antimachus recite his poem, when all the herd had left him; and he himself wrote both tragedies and other pieces. Perhaps he found them a little too busy with his gods; and he being the first that made philosophy divine and rational, was modest in his own beginnings.

Another name they had, of honor too, and that was Vates. Nor know I how to distinguish between the prophets and poets of Israel. What is Jeremiah's Lamentation, but a kind of Sapphic elegy? David's Psalms are not only poems, but songs, snatches, and raptures of a flaming spirit. And this indeed I observe, to

the honor of poets, I never found them covetous or scrapingly base. The Jews had not two such kings in all their catalogue as Solomon and his father; poets both. There is a largeness in their souls beyond the narrowness of other men; and why may we not then think, this may embrace more, both of heaven and God? I cannot but conjecture this to be the reason that they, most of them, are poor. They find their minds so solaced with their own flights, that they neglect the study of growing rich; and this, I confess again, I think, turns them to vice and unmanly courses. Besides, they are for the most part mighty lovers of their palates; and this is known an impoverisher. Antigonus in the tented field found Antagoras cooking of a conger himself. And they all are friends to the grape and liquor; though I think many, more out of a ductile nature and their love to pleasant company, than their affection to the juice alone. They are all of free natures, and are the truest definition of that philosopher's man, which gives him "animal risibile." Their grossest fault is, that you may conclude them sensual; yet this does not touch them all. Ingenious for the most part they are. I know there be some rhyming fools; but what have they to do with poetry? When Sallust would tell us, that Sempronia's wit was not ill,

says he, "Potuit versus facere, et jocum movere;" she could make a verse and break a

jest.

Something there is in it more than ordinary, in that it is all in such measured language as may be marred by reading. I laugh heartily

at Philoxenus's jest, who, passing by and hearing some masons mis-sensing his lines, (with their ignorant sawing of them,) falls to breaking amain. They ask the cause, and he replies, They spoil his work, and he theirs. Certainly a worthy poet is so far from being a fool, that there is some wit required in him that shall be able to read him well; and without the true accent, numbered poetry does lose of the gloss. It was a speech becoming an able. poet of our own, when a lord read his verses crookedly, and he beseeched his lordship not to murder him in his own lines. He that speaks false Latin breaks Priscian's head; but he that repeats a verse ill puts Homer out of joint. One thing commends it beyond oratory; it ever complieth to the sharpest judgment. He is the best orator that pleaseth all, even the crowd and clowns. But poetry would be poor that they should all approve of. If the learned and judicious like it, let the throng bray. These, when it is best, will like it the least. So they contemn what they understand not;