cording to the epic rules of
Aristotle had been well enough illustrated by Addison on _Paradise Lost_
(see especially _Spectator_ 267) if not by Addison on ballads. The
decline of simple respect for the "Practice and Authority" of the
ancient models during the neo-classic era, the general advance of
something like reasoning in criticism, finds one of its quainter
testimonials in the Eton schoolboy's cleverness. He would show by
definition and strict deduction that _The Knave of Hearts_ is a "_due
and proper Epic Poem_," having as "good right to that title, from its
adherence to prescribed rules, as any of the celebrated master-pieces of
antiquity." The post-Ramblerian date of the performance and a further if
incidental aim of the satire--a facetious removal from the Augustan
coffeehouse conversation--can be here and there felt in a heavy roll of
the periods, a doubling and redoubling of the abstractions.[11]

The essay, nevertheless, shows sufficient continuity with the earlier
tradition of parody ballad criticism--for it begins by alluding to the
_Spectator's_ critiques of Shakespeare, Milton, and _Chevy Chase_, and
near the end of the first number slides into a remark that "one of the
_Scribleri_, a descendant of the famous _Martinus_, has expressed his
suspicions of the text being corrupted." A page or two of irony
concerning the "plain and simple" opening of the poem seems to hark back
to something more subtle in the Augustans than the Wagstaffian derision,
no doubt to Pope's victory over Philips in a _Guardian_ on pastorals.
"There is no task more difficult to a Poet, than that of _Rejection_.
Ovid, among the ancients, and _Dryden_, among the moderns, were perhaps
the most remarkable for the want of it."[12]

The interest of these little pieces is historical[13] in a fairly strict
sense. Their value is indirect, half accidental, a glancing revelation
of ideas concerning simplicity, feeling, genius, the primitive, the
historical which run steadily beneath all the ripples during the century
that moves from "classic" to "romantic." Not all of Addison's parodists
taken together muster as much fun, as such whimsical charm, as Addison
himself in a single paragraph such as the one on "accidental readings"
which opens the _Spectator_ on the _Children in the Wood_. But this
passage, as it happens, requires only a slightly sophistical application
to be taken as a cue to a useful attitude in our present reading.
"I once met