was exhausted, since we live in a
country, where liberty suffers every character to spread itself to its
utmost bulk, and which, therefore, produces more originals than all the
rest of the world together. Of tragedy he concluded business to be the
soul, and yet often hinted that love predominates too much upon the
modern stage.

He was now an acknowledged critick, and had his own seat in a
coffee-house, and headed a party in the pit. Minim has more vanity than
ill-nature, and seldom desires to do much mischief; he will, perhaps,
murmur a little in the ear of him that sits next him, but endeavours to
influence the audience to favour, by clapping when an actor exclaims,
_Ye gods!_ or laments the misery of his country.

By degrees he was admitted to rehearsals; and many of his friends are of
opinion, that our present poets are indebted to him for their happiest
thoughts; by his contrivance the bell was rung twice in Barbarossa, and
by his persuasion the author of Cleone concluded his play without a
couplet; for what can be more absurd, said Minim, than that part of a
play should be rhymed, and part written in blank verse? and by what
acquisition of faculties is the speaker, who never could find rhymes
before, enabled to rhyme at the conclusion of an act?

He is the great investigator of hidden beauties, and is particularly
delighted when he finds "the sound an echo to the sense." He has read
all our poets, with particular attention to this delicacy of
versification, and wonders at the supineness with which their works have
been hitherto perused, so that no man has found the sound of a drum in
this distich:

"When pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,
Was beat with fist instead of a stick;"

and that the wonderful lines upon honour and a bubble have hitherto
passed without notice:

"Honour is like the glassy bubble,
Which costs philosophers such trouble;
Where, one part crack'd, the whole does fly,
And wits are crack'd to find out why."

In these verses, says Minim, we have two striking accommodations of the
sound to the sense. It is impossible to utter the first two lines
emphatically without an act like that which they describe; _bubble_ and
_trouble_ causing a momentary inflation of the cheeks by the retention
of the breath, which is afterwards forcibly emitted, as in the practice
of _blowing bubbles_. But the greatest excellence is in the third line,
which is _crack'd_ in the middle to express a crack, and th