aux dames de rougir, oyans seulement nommer ce qu'elles ne
craignent aucunement a faire; Nous n'esons appeller a droict nos
membres, et ne craignons pas de les employer a toute sorte de
debauche. La ceremonie nous defend d'exprimer par paroles les choses
licites et naturelles, et nous l'en croyons; la raison nous defend de
n'en faire point d'illicites et mauvaises, et personne ne l'en croit._
My comfort is, that by this opinion my enemies are but sucking
critics, who would fain be nibbling ere their teeth are come.

Yet, in this nicety of manners does the excellency of French poetry
consist. Their heroes are the most civil people breathing; but their
good breeding seldom extends to a word of sense; all their wit is in
their ceremony; they want the genius which animates our stage; and
therefore it is but necessary, when they cannot please, that they
should take care not to offend. But as the civillest man in the
company is commonly the dullest, so these authors, while they are
afraid to make you laugh or cry, out of pure good manners, make you
sleep. They are so careful not to exasperate a critic, that they never
leave him any work; so busy with the broom, and make so clean a
riddance, that there is little left either for censure or for praise:
For no part of a poem is worth our discommending, where the whole is
insipid; as when we have once tasted of palled wine, we stay not to
examine it glass by glass. But while they affect to shine in trifles,
they are often careless in essentials. Thus, their Hippolitus is so
scrupulous in point of decency, that he will rather expose himself to
death, than accuse his step-mother to his father; and my critics I am
sure will commend him for it: But we of grosser apprehensions are apt
to think, that this excess of generosity is not practicable, but with
fools and madmen. This was good manners with a vengeance; and the
audience is like to be much concerned at the misfortunes of this
admirable hero. But take Hippolitus out of his poetic fit, and I
suppose he would think it a wiser part, to set the saddle on the right
horse, and chuse rather to live with the reputation of a plain-spoken
honest man, than to die with the infamy of an incestuous villain.[1]
In the mean time we may take notice, that where the poet ought to have
preserved the character as it was delivered to us by antiquity, when
he should have given us the picture of a rough young man, of the
Amazonian strain, a jolly huntsm