Let high birth triumph! what can be more great?
Nothing-but merit in a low eftate:

To virtue's humblest fon let none prefer
Vice, tho' defcended from the conqueror.
Shall men like figures pafs for high, or base,
Slight, or important, only by their place?
Titles are marks of honeft men and wife ;
The fool, or knave, that wears a title, lies.

The man who builds and wants wherewith to pay,
Provides a home from which to run away.
In Britain what is many a lordly feat,
But a discharge in full for an estate?

Is thy ambition sweating for a rhyme,
Thou unambitious fool, at this late time?
While I a moment name, a moment's past,
I'm nearer death in this verfe than the laft;
What then is to be done? be wife with speed:
A fool at forty is a fool indeed.

Nothing exceeds in ridicule no doubt
A fool in fashion but a fool that's out;
His paffion for abfurdity's fo ftrong,
He cannot bear a rival in the wrong.

The fylvan race our active nymphs pursue ;
Man is not all the game they have in view :
In woods and fields their glory they complete,
There maler Betty leaps a five-barr'd gate;
While fair mifs Charles to toilets is confin'd,
Nor rafhly tempts the bar'brous fun and wind.

But thefe thoughts, however pleasing, should never be introduced where the paffions are concerned; nor indeed are defcriptions and fimilies there to be admitted, unless they are extremely fhort, and fuch as may be naturally thrown out by the conflicts of the foul, and help to exprefs its paffion and furprise: for to put points of wit, luxuriant defcriptions, and beautiful fimilies into the mouths of perfons agitated by paffion, or labouring under the agonies of death, as is too frequently done in our tragedies, is offering violence to nature. Joy, grief, and anger are most naturally expreffed by exclamations, fudden ftarts,

and broken fentences; and even when nature is thus dif turbed and agitated, a feeming incoherence may be pardonable; but ftudied decorations can never be admitted.

There is another fault which young people are mighty apt to give into, and that is what may be called, running down a thought. When they have started a thought which is in itfelf beautiful, and would dignify their work, they never know when to part with it, but keep tricking it up till they have turned the fine gentleman into a fop, and rendered that which was ineftimable,, of no manner of value. Seafonable filence has its emphasis.-'Tis not in thefe works of genius prudent to be over explicit; for it not only borders on vanity, and carries with it a fuppofition, that nobody can difcern a beauty except yourself, but deprives the reader alfo of the pleasure he would otherwife have of employing his own fagacity. In fhort, the writer should never fay fo much, but that the reader may perceive he was capable of faying more; for the hunting down a thought, and tiring the reader with a repetition of tedious particulars, is ever the mark of a little trifling genius.

And here we are also to observe, that the too frequent ufe of wit, or, in other words, the filling any difcourfe or poem with too many of thofe thoughts we have been de-. fcribing, is not to be tolerated.

Another fault which often does befall,
Is when the wit of fome great poet shall
So overflow that it be none at all *..

A poem, like a dinner or a defert, may be made too rich, and, instead of gratifying, difguft. Poetry indeed admits of more ornament than profe; but true taste and right. reafon abhors luxury in both. Befides, there are other thoughts to be introduced into every work which neither ftrike us with their grandeur, beauty, delicacy, or pointed wit, but which are fraught with good fenfe and folidity; that carry weight in their meaning; and fink deep in the understanding: thefe, therefore, and common thoughts, are to be confidered as the basis and superstructure, and the other as the ornamental parts of the work; which should not be forced in to difplay suit and finery, but introduced

* Duke of Buckingham's Efay on Poetry.

to conftitute beauty, variety, and order; and arife naturally out of the fubject treated of, and seem so inseparable from it, that every reader may think he should have fo expreffed it himself in fhort, though the thoughts were not obvious to the reader before, they should appear fo now; which, as Mr. Addifon obferves, is the true character of all fine writing. We come now to

Of the STYLE of POETRY.

FTER dwelling fo long on thoughts in poetry, little

A need be faid of the poetic ftyle; for the paffages we

have felected to illuftrate the thoughts, may ferve as so many examples of style also.

The beauty of ftyle in general confifts in a proper choice of words, fo connected that they may exprefs the conceptions of the mind clearly, and with a becoming dignity; for the style is to be efteemed in proportion as it is expreffive of the thoughts it is defigned to convey.

As words are intended to exprefs our thoughts, they ought to grow out of them. Since the moft natural are the beft, and proper expreffions are generally connected with the ideas themselves, and follow them as the shadow does the fubftance. Those who think clearly, therefore, will always write fo, provided they are mafters of the language, and have obtained for the memory a good stock of expreffions, by a conftant perufal of the best and most elegant anthors.

We are to obferve, however, that poetry has a language peculiar to itself, which is in many refpects very different from that of profe.-For as the poet's defign is principally to please, to move the paffions, and to infpire the foul with. noble and fublime fentiments, he is allowed great latitude of language, and may ufe fuch bold expreffions and uncommon modes of fpeech, fuch frequent repetitions, free epithets, and extenfive and adorned descriptions, as are not to be admitted in profe. Thus, for inftance, in defcribing a lawn near to a grotto in a wood, the prose writer fays, Close to her grotto, which is shaded by a grove, there is a beautiful

lawn edged round with moss. Which the poet would probably have described in this manner.

Close to her grott within the

grove, A carpet's laid that nature wove; Which time extended on the ground,

And tuff'd with moss the selvage round.

Poetry endeavours to exprefs things paraphraftically, or in fhort defcriptions, rather than in fimple terms; and in thofe defcriptions, the profopopoeia is often ufed. Thus Milton, when defcribing the finging of the nightingale, fays, Silence was pleased; and that at the rifing of the fun, the hours unbarr'd the gates of light. Which office Homer affigns to the morning.

Soon as the Morn, in orient purple drest,

Unbarr'd the portals of the roseate east.

The royal Pfalmift tells us, the clouds drop fatnefs, and the hills rejoice, that the fruitful fields fmile, and the vallies laugh and fing. And these short allegories and ima ges, which convey particular circumstances to the reader after an unusual and entertaining manner, have a fine effect in poetry, that delights in imitation, and endeavours to give to almost every thing, life, motion, and found; but these would in profe appear very ridiculous and pedantic. In poetry likewise, we often put particulars for generals, and frequently diftinguifh and allude to men, places, rivers, mountains, &c. by various names taken from any of their adjuncts, which profe will rarely admit of. In short, poetry is a fort of painting in words; the thoughts are the figures, and the words are the colours, the lights and shades with which they are cloathed and prefented to the imagination of the reader. The verse therefore (though poetry delights in harmony, which excites a pleasure that makes its way directly to the foul) is not to be always harmonious, but fhould be fo contrived, as Mr. Pope observes, that the found may echo to the sense, and be rough or fmooth, fwift or flow, according to the idea or thought it is intended to elucidate. The following paffage from his Effay on Criticifm (fome allowances being made for the fecond line and for the laft) is in this cafe both a precept and an example.

Soft is the ftrain when Zephyr gently blows,

And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud furges lafh the founding shore,
The hoarfe rough verfe fhould like the torrent roar.
When Ajax ftrives fome rock's vaft weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move flow;
Not fo when swift Camilla fcours the plain,

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

But before we fpeak of the several forts of style, it will be proper to take fome notice of the epithets, tropes and figures of which they are principally compounded; fince it is by these different modes of fpeech that the poet is enabled to vary a discourse almost to infinity; to fhew the fame object in a thousand different forms, and all of them new; to prefent pleafing images to the fenfes and imagination, to addrefs them in the language they love, to express small matters with grace, and the greatest with a nobleness and fublimity equal to their grandeur and majesty.

Nothing contributes more to the beauty of the poetic ftyle than epithets properly employed; and Quintilian, and Rollin after him, obferves, that poets make use of them more frequently and more freely than orators. More frequently, be cause it is a great fault to overload a difcourfe in profe with too many epithets; whereas in poetry, they always produce a good effect, though in ever fo great a number. More freely, because with the poets it is enough that the epithet is fuitable to the word it is annexed to: But in profe, every epithet which produces no effect, and adds nothing to the thing spoken of, is vicious. Great deference fhould be paid to authors fo deservedly eminent in the literary world: we muit however beg leave to obferve, that the latitude they have given us for the use of Epithets, is a little too extenfive; fince nothing tires a reader more than too great a redundancy of them, and especially when they are useless, and thrown in, as they too often are, to make out the measure of the verse. Epithets can never be admitted with propriety, unless they excité fome new idea, or give fome illuftration and ornament to the fubftantives to which they are annexed; and it is with this view that they are used in Milton, and our best poets; where we also find many that are compounded, such as bright-hair'd Vesta, smooth-fhaven green, cloud-capt towers, vale-dwelling lily, &c. which have a peculiar beauty when