of these qualities may be fufficient to recommend it. In didactick poetry, of which the great purpose is inftruction, a fimile may be praised which illuftrates, though it does not ennoble; in heroicks, that may be admitted which ennobles, though it does not illuftrate. That it may be complete, it is required to exhibit, independently of its references, a pleafing image; for a fimile is faid to be a fhort episode. To this antiquity was so attentive, that circumftances were sometimes added, which, having no parallels, ferved only to fill the imagination, and produced what Perrault ludicrously called comparisons with a long tail. In their fimilies the greatest writers have fometimes failed; the fhip-race, compared with the chariot-race, is neither illuftrated nor aggrandifed; land and water make all the difference: when Apollo, running after Daphne, is likened to a greyhound chafing a hare, there is nothing gained; the ideas of purfuit and flight are too plain to be made plainer, and a god and the daughter of a god are not reprefented much to their advantage, by a hare and dog. The fimile of the Alps has no ufelefs parts, yet affords a ftriking picture by itself; it makes the fore going position better understood, and enables it to take fafter hold on the attention; it affifts the apprehenfion, and elevates the fancy. Let me likewife dwell a little on the celebrated paragraph, in which it is directed that the found fhould feem an echo to the fense; a precept which Pope is allowed to have obferved beyond any other English poet. This notion of representative metre, and the defire of discovering frequent adaptations of the found to the fenfe, have produced, in my opinion, many wild conceits and imaginary beauties. All that can furnish this representation are the founds of the words confidered fingly, and the time in which they are pronounced. Every language has fome words framed to exhibit the noises which they exprefs, as thump, rattle, growl, bifs. Thefe however are but few, and the poet cannot make them more, nor can they be of any use but when found is to be mentioned. The time of pronunciation was in the dactylick measures of the learned languages capable of confiderable variety; but that variety could be accommodated only to motion or duration,› and different degrees of motion were perhaps expreffed by verfes rapid or flow, with very little attention of the writer, when the image had full poffeffion of his fancy; but our language having little flexibility, our verses can differ very little in their cadence. The fancied refemblances, I fear, arife fometimes merely from the ambiguity of words; there is fuppofed to be fome relation between a Loft line and a foft couch, or between hard fyllables and hard fortune. Motion, however, may be in fome fort exemplified; and yet it may be fufpected that even in fuch resemblances the mind often governs the ear, and the founds are estimated by their meaning. One of the most fuccefsful attempts has been to defcribe the labour of Sifyphus: With many a weary step, and many a groan, Up a high hill he heaves a huge round ftone; The huge round ftone, refulting with a bound, Thunders impetuous down, and fmoaks along the ground. Who Who does not perceive the stone to move flowly upward, and roll violently back? But fet the same numbers to another sense; While many a merry tale, and many a song, Chear'd the rough road, we wifh'd the rough road long, The rough road then, returning in a round, Mock'd our impatient fteps, for all was fairy ground. We have now surely loft much of the delay, and much of the rapidity. But to fhew how little the greatest master of numbers can fix the principles of reprefentative harmony, it will be fufficient to remark that the poet, who tells us, that When Ajax ftrives-the words move flow. when he had enjoyed for about thirty years the praise of Camilla's lightness of foot, tried another experiment upon found and time, and produced this memorable triplet ; Waller Waller was fmooth; but Dryden taught to join The varying verfe, the full refounding line, The long majestick march, and energy divine. Here are the swiftnefs of the rapid race, and the march of flow-paced majefty, exhibited by the fame poet in the fame fequence of fyllables, except that the exact prosodist will find the line of fwiftnefs by one time longer than that of tardiness. Beauties of this kind are commonly fancied; and when real, are technical and nugatory, not to be rejected, and not to be folicited. -To the praises which have been accumulated on The Rape of the Lock by readers of every class, from the critick to the waitingmaid, it is difficult to make any addition. Of that which is univerfally allowed to be the most attractive of all ludicrous compofitions, let it rather be now enquired from what fources the power of pleafing is derived. Dr. Warburton, who excelled in critical perfpicacity, has remarked that the preternatural agents are very happily adapted to the purposes |