How nice an ear he had in music, is sufficiently known; his praise
therefore has established the reputation of it above censure, and made
it in a manner sacred. It is therefore humbly and religiously
dedicated to his memory.
It might reasonably have been expected that his death must have
changed the whole fabric of the opera, or at least a great part of it.
But the design of it originally was so happy, that it needed no
alteration, properly so called; for the addition of twenty or thirty
lines in the apotheosis of Albion, has made it entirely of a piece,
This was the only way which could have been invented, to save it from
botched ending; and it fell luckily into my imagination; as if there
were a kind of fatality even in the most trivial things concerning the
succession: a change was made, and not for the worse, without the
least confusion or disturbance; and those very causes, which seemed to
threaten us with troubles, conspired to produce our lasting happiness.
Footnotes:
1. This definition occurs in the preface to the "State of Innocence;"
but although given by Dryden, and sanctioned by Pope, it has a very
limited resemblance to that which is defined. Mr Addison has,
however, mistaken Dryden, in supposing that he applied this
definition exclusively to what we now properly call _wit_. From the
context it is plain, that he meant to include all poetical
composition.
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