It is impossible, I think, to point out all the beauties of this little ode, unless we were to examine every line separately; for there appears to me scarce a sentence that is not conceived in the real sublime spirit of poetry; truth, nature, and simplicity, the most animated fire, and the most studied correctness, are conspicuous through the whole; and all your readers, who have, at any time in their lives, felt the influence of this sober goddess, will, I am sure, acknowledge, that nothing can be more justly imagined, or executed in a more masterly man ner. For my own part, madam, I will own to you, that I have long been a votary to this pensive power, which may possibly be the reason why this ode strikes my imagination so forcibly; I lost, seven years since, a wife I adored, in all the bloom of youth and beauty: whose dear remembrance, even at this distance of time, calls the sacred drops of sorrow into my eyes. The world has now no joys for me; and since I have been thus unhappily deprived of the soft companion of my hours, I have preferred Fountain heads, and pathless groves, to all the hurry of cities and pomp of courts. I can say with the strictest truth, that to me, Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy. I am, madam, with the sincerest wishes for the continuance of your success, Your very humble Servant, OLD MAID, No. 12. Milton has not only imitated this exquisite song in the Nice Valour, or Passionate Madman, of Beaumont and Fletcher; but he has also taken some of his imagery, and, in some degree, the measure of his versification, from a poem prefixed to Burton's Anatomie of Melancholy, entitled "The author's Abstract of Melancholy," which was probably written about the year 1600. It consists of twelve stanzas, of which I shall present my reader with the first six. When I go musing all alone, Thinking of divers things fore-known, Void of sorrow and void of fear, When I go walking all alone, When to myself I act and smile, All my joys besides are folly, When I lie, sit, or walk alone, Methinks I hear, methinks I see All other joys to this are folly, Methinks I hear, methinks I see All my griefs to this are jolly, BURTON'S ANATOMY, eighth edition, 1676, No. XCIX. Sudden she storms! she raves! you tip the wink: POPE Madam, In one of your former papers you were pleased to point out to us some latent beauties in Virgil, which I confess never occurred to me till I saw them illuminated by your pen. You have given us a noble example, in searching into the hidden treasures of a classic author, who never can be admired too much, or read too often. If the Roman poet has been blamed for the improper sullen conduct of Dido, he has also undergone very severe censures for his treatment of queen Amata, the wife of the good Latinus, and mother of the fair Lavinia. "What an ignominious death," exclaims the critic, “has Virgil assigned the queen of Latium? She hangs herself. Where was the bowl of poison, or the golden-hilted dagger? either of which might have sustained her royal character, and sent her with dignity to the lower world. Master Cotton of the Peake has humorously ridiculed the catastrophe of Amata, VOL. II. 2 C by sending the celebrated queen of Carthage, in the same manner, to the mansions of the dead:" -She mounts the table, Because, though tall, she was not able * * * &c. Thus, thus (quoth she) to shades of night With that she from the table swung I should never be forgiven by the admirers of this species of wit, if I here omitted to give the lines which describe the release of Dido from the fatal noose, by the many-coloured maid: O Dido! thus I let thee loose From twitch of suffocating noose; Which said, and tossing high her blade, With great dexterity, the maid, O wonderful! even at one side blow Spoil'd a good rope, and down dropp'd Dido. But to all outcries of the critics, and to all poor attempts as those of Cotton, Scarron, such |