singly we have so great an esteem, stand up together as vouchers for one another's reputation. But at the same time that Virgil was celebrated by Gallus, Propertius, Horace, Varius, Tucca, and Ovid, we know that Bavius and Mævius were his declared foes and calumniators.

for a

In our own country a man seldom sets up poet, without attacking the reputation of all his brothers in the art. The ignorance of the moderns, the scribblers of the age, the decay of poetry, are the topics of detraction with which he makes his entrance into the world: but how much more noble is the fame that is built on candour and ingenuity, according to those beautiful lines of Sir John Denham, in his poem on Fletcher's works :

But whither am I stray'd? I need not raise
Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise:
Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built,
Nor needs thy juster title the foul guilt
Of Eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,
Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain.

I am sorry to find that an author, who is very justly esteemed among the best judges, has admitted some strokes of this nature into a very fine poem; I mean the Art of Criticism*, which was published some months since, and is a master-piece in its kind. The observations follow one another like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been requisite in a prose author. They are some of them uncommont, but such as the reader must assent to, when he sees them explained with that elegance and perspicuity in which they are delivered. As for those which

*See Pope's Works, vol. v. p. 201. 6 vols. Edit. Lond. 12mo.

1770.

+ See Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, sect. III. p. 97. 2d ed. 1763.

are the most known, and the most received, they are placed in so beautiful a light, and illustrated with such apt allusions, that they have in them all the graces of novelty, and make the reader, who was before acquainted with them, still more convinced of their truth and solidity. And here give me leave to mention what Monsieur Boileau has so very well enlarged upon in the preface to his works, that wit and fine writing do not consist so much in advancing things that are new, as in giving things that are known an agreeable turn. It is impossible for us, who live in the latter ages of the world, to make observations in criticism, morality, or in any art or science, which have not been touched upon by others. We have little else left us, but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights. If a reader examines Horace's Art of Poetry, he will find but very few precepts in it, which he may not meet with in Aristotle, and which were not commonly known by all the poets of the Augustan age. His way of expressing and applying them, not his invention of them, is what we are chiefly to admire.

For this reason I think there is nothing in the world so tiresome as the works of those critics who write in a positive dogmatic way, without either language, genius, or imagination. If the reader would see how the best of the Latin critics wrote, he may find their manner very beautifully described in the characters of Horace, Petronius, Quintilian, and Longinus, as they are drawn in the essay of which I am now speaking.

Since I have mentioned Longinus, who in his reflections has given us the same kind of sublime, which he observes in the several passages that occasioned them; I cannot but take notice that our English author has after the same manner exempli

fied several of his precepts in the very precepts themselves. I shall produce two or three instances of this kind. Speaking of the insipid smoothness which some readers are so much in love with, he has the following verses :

These equal syllables alone require,
Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire,
While expletives their feeble aid do join,
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.

The gaping of the vowels in the second line, the expletive do' in the third, and the ten monosyllables in the fourth, give such a beauty to this passage, as would have been very much admired in an ancient poet. The reader may observe the following lines in the same view:

A needless Alexandrine ends the song,

That like a wounded snake drags its slow length along.
And afterward,

'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,

Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.

The beautiful distich upon Ajax in the foregoing lines puts me in mind of a description in Homer's Odyssey, which none of the critics have taken notice of. It is where Sisyphus is represented lifting his stone up the hill, which is no sooner carried to the top of it, but it immediately tumbles to the bottom. This double motion of the stone is admirably described in the number of these verses; as in the four first it is heaved up by several spondees inter

mixed with proper breathing places, and at last trundles down in a continued line of dactyls;

Καὶ μὴν Σίσυφον εἰσεῖδον, κρατέρ ̓ ἄλγε' ἔχοντα,
Λᾶαν βαστάζοντα πελώριον ἀμφοτέρησιν,
Ἤτοι ὁ μὲν σκηριπτόμενος χερσίν τε ποσίν τε,
Λᾶαν ἄνω ωθεσκε ποτὶ λοφον· ἄλλ ̓ ὅτε μὲλλοι
̓Ακρον ὑπερβαλέειν, τότ ̓ ἀποστρέψασκε Κραταιὶς,

Αὐτις ἔπειτα πέδονδε κυλίνδετο λᾶας αναιδής. Obyss. I. 11.

I turn'd my eye, and as I turn'd survey'd
A mournful vision! the Sisyphian shade:
With many a weary step, and many a groan,
Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone:
The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,

Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.

POPE.

It would be endless to quote verses out of Virgil which have this particular kind of beauty in the numbers; but I may take an occasion in a future paper, to shew several of them which have escaped the observations of others.

I cannot conclude this paper without taking notice that we have three poems in our tongue, which are of the same nature, and each of them a masterpiece in its kind; the Essay on Translated Verse, the Essay on the Art of Poetry, and the Essay upon Criticism.-C.

*By the Earl of Roscommon.

END OF VOL. IX.

Printed by J. F. Dove, St. John's Square.