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DAN MAST. What of the-the

SOUR. I know not what.

DAN. MAST. You mock me, sir; you shall dance the Allemande, since Clarissa will have it so, or

[He leads him about, the fiddle playing the Allemande. SOUR. I shall be laughed at by the whole town if it should be known. I am determined, for this frolic, to deprive Clarissa of that invaluable blessing, the possession of my

person.

DAN. MAST. Come, come, sir, move, move. (teaching him.)

SOUR. Cockatrice!

DAN. MAST. One, two, three! (teaching.)

SOUR. A d-d, infernal

Enter WENTWORTH.

Oh! brother, you are come in good time to free me from this cursed bondage.

WENT. HOW! for shame brother, at your age to be thus foolish.

SOUR. As I hope for mercy

WENT. For shame, for shame-practising at sixty what should have been finished at six.

DAN. MAST. He's not the only grown gentleman I have had in hand.

WENT. Brother, brother, you'll be the mockery of the whole city.

SOUR. Eternal babbler! hear me; this curs'd confounded villain will make me dance perforce.

WENT. Perforce!

SOUR. Yes; by order, he says, of Clarissa; but since I now find she is unworthy, I give her up-renounce her for

ever.

[The young couple enter immediately after this declaration, and finding no farther obstruction to their union, the piece finishes with the consent of the Grumbler, “in the hope," as he says, "that they are possessed of mutual requisites to be the plague of each other."]

CRITICISM,

RELATING TO

POETRY AND THE BELLES-LETTRES.

[Now first collected. See LIFE, ch. vi. and viii.]

CRITICISM,

RELATING TO

POETRY AND THE BELLES-LETTRES.

1.- BURKE ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL. (1)

[From the Monthly Review, 1757. "A Philosophical Enquir into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. 8vo. Dodsley.]

THERE are limits prescribed to all human researches, beyond which if we attempt to explore, nothing but obscurity and conjecture lie before us, and doubts instead of knowledge must terminate the enquiry. The genius, not the judgment, of an author may appear in the too abstracted speculation; he may contribute to the amusement, but seldom to the instruction of the reader. His illustrations may perplex, but not enlighten the mind; and, like a microscope, the more he magnifies the object, he will represent it the more obscurely.

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(1) [This celebrated work, which Dr. Johnson considered an example of true criticism," and which now forms a text book in liberal education, was planned when Mr. Burke was in his twenty-second year, and finished before he had attained his twenty-fifth. Whether Goldsmith knew the author personally at this time is doubtful; that he may have been informed of his name, and remembered him as a college contemporary, is probable. See Life, ch. vi.]

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