to discern, or to acknowledge. When disinterested posterity holds the balance of justice to weigh the real worth of a poem, it will first refine and purify it from all the allay cast in by malevolence and detraction; as, on the other hand, it will efface all ungenuine and adventitious beauty imparted to it by the indulgence of friends, or the zeal of a designing party; and when the merit of such a writing, being freed from unnatural mixtures, shall be reduced to a standard fineness, and put into equal scales, it will pass like the coins of princes in foreign countries, only by intrinsic weight and purity. Posterity will infallibly assert their liberty of judging for themselves, and 'tis certain their determination will be impartial; which, if the passions of human nature are considered, is impracticable before.

The painter sometimes debases the dignity of his art, shocks the modest spectator by the immorality of his pieces, and transmits by the eye, which is the most warm and immediate manner of conveyance, impure ideas to the mind. 'Tis surprising to observe in some collections that adorn our rooms, the ranging and order of the pictures: here you behold a devout martyr in the agonies of death, and next to it a lascivious Jupiter; in one place a penitent Magdalene dissolved in tears, and not far off a naked Venus:

which is just as if one should see in a lady's closet, an obscene author and a prayer-book lying together; or, which is frequent among us, poems of devotion and wanton sonnets, hymns to the Supreme Being and praises to Cupid, huddled together in the same inconsist ent volume.

The comic writers, and the petulant versifiers, often prostitute their genius no less than the painter; and, to court the favour of those who espouse the interest of vice and impiety, break through the restraints of good sense and decency, and often entertain the audience at the expence of religion, virtue, and innocence.

LAY-MONASTERY, No. 32, Jan. 27, 1713,

No. VII.

Si veteres ita miratur laudatque poetas,
Ut nihil anteferat, nihil illis comparet, errat.

HORATIUS.

If so "is" prais'd each ancient poet's song,
That nothing is compared, much less preferr'd,
Such judgment is erroneous and absurd.

BOSCAWEN.

THERE are no parts in a poem which strike the generality of readers with so much pleasure as descriptions; and there are none in which poets of an ordinary rank are more frequently betrayed into faults. A judicious description is like a face which is beautiful without art; an injudicious one is like a painted complexion, which often discovers itself by affecting more gaite yof colour than is natural.

The reason why descriptions make livelier impressions on common readers than any other parts of a poem, is because they are formed of ideas drawn from the senses, which is sometimes too called imaging, and are thus in a manner, like pictures, made objects of the sight: whereas, moral thoughts and discourses, consisting of ideas abstracted from sense, operate slower

2

and with less vivacity. Every one immediately perceives the resemblance of nature in the description of a tempest, a palace, or a garden; but the beauty of proper sentiments in the speeches of a prince, a general, or a counsellor, is more remotę, and discerned by a kind of second thought or reflection.

As descriptions are all drawn from objects of the senses, and the likeness or unlikeness of them are easily perceived; so there is a general similitude in all true descriptions of the same objects drawn by several hands, like that in a picture of the same person done by several artists. And yet the degrees of likeness, and the different manner of expressing it, by those several artists, make a very distinguishable and entertaining variety. The famous descrip

tion of a horse in the sixth book of Homer's Iliad, that in the fragment of Ennius, and that in the eleventh book of the Eneis, are indeed the same, the two latter being only copies of the first. But the description of the horse in Homer, and that in the book of Job, are very different, yet both are extremely natural and beautiful.

There is no particular description which the writers of heroic poetry seem to have laboured to vary so much, as that of the morning. This

is a topic on which they have drawn out all the copiousness, and even the luxury, of their fancies. The chastest and most correct writers seem to indulge themselves on this occasion in a greater sport of imagination, and I had almost said extravagance, than on any other subject whatever; as if it were a trial of skill among them, who should paint the morning the most beautifully. I once amused myself with drawing together out of the best poets a variety of these descriptions, which methought appeared like so many fine skies differently coloured, and interspersed with clouds, by the best masters in landscape. And I imagine it will not be an unacceptable entertainment to the reader, if I here present him with some few out of this collection of morning pieces.

The morning is most frequently figured as a goddess or divine person, flying in the air, unbarring the gates of light, and opening the day. She is drawn by Homer in a saffron garment, and with rosy hands, (which is the epithet he almost constantly bestows on her,) sprinkling light through the earth. She arises out of the waves of the sea, leaves the bed of Tithon her lover, ascends the heavens, appears to gods and to men, and gives notice of the sun-rising. She is placed, by this father of the poets, sometimes