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acquaintance with originals, and justly ridicules those who think they can form just ideas of vallies, mountains, and rivers, in a garret of the Strand. For this reason I cannot regret with this author, that Pope laid aside his design of writing American pastorals; for as he must have painted scenes which he never saw, and manners which he never knew, his performance, though it might have been a pleasing amusement of fancy, would have exhibited no representation of nature or of life.

After the pastorals, the critic considers the lyric poetry of Pope, and dwells longest on the ode of St. Cecilia's day, which he, like the rest of mankind, places next to that of Dryden, and not much below it. He remarks, after Mr. Spence, that the first stanza is a perfect concert. The second he thinks a little flat; he justly commends the fourth, but without notice of the best line in that stanza or in the poem ;

Transported demigods stood round,
And men grew heroes at the sound.

In the latter part of the ode he objects to the stanza of triumph;

Thus song could reveal, &c.

as written in a measure ridiculous and burlesque, and justifies his answer by observing that Addison uses the same numbers in the scene of Rosamond, between Grideline and Sir Trusty;

How unhappy is he, &o,

That the measure is the same in both passages must be confessed, and both poets perhaps chose their numbers properly; for they both meant to express a kind of airy hilarity. The two passions of merriment and exultation are undoubtedly different; they are as different as a gambol and a triumph, but each is a species of joy; and poetical measures have not in any language been so far refined as to provide for the subdivisions of passion. They can only be adapted to general purposes; but the particular and minuter propriety must be sought only in the sentiment and language. Thus the numbers are the same in Colin's complaint, and in the ballad of Darby and Joan, though in one sadness is represented, and in the other tranquillity; so the measure is the same of Popes Unfortunate Lady and the Praise of Voiture.

He observes very justly, that the odes both of Dryden and Pope conclude unsuitably and unnaturally with epigram.

He then spends a page upon Mr. Handel's music to Dryden's ode, and speaks of him with that regard which he has generally obtained among the lovers of sound. He finds something amiss in the air "With ravished ears,” but has overlooked or forgotten the grossest fault in that composition, which is that in this line;

Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries.

He has laid much stress upon the two latter words, which are merely words of connection, and ought in music to be considered as parenthetical.

From this ode is struck out a digression on the nature of odes, and the comparative excellence of the ancients and moderns. He mentions the chorus which Pope wrote for the duke of Buckingham, and thence takes occasion to treat of the chorus of the ancients. He then comes to another ode of "The dying christian to his Soul," in which finding an apparent imitation of Flatman, he falls into a pleasing and learned speculation on the resembling passages to be found in different poets.

He mentions with great regard Pope's ode on Solitude, written when he was but twelve years old, but omits to mention the poem on Silence, composed, I think, as early, with much greater elegance of diction, music of numbers, extent of observation, and force of thought. If he had happened to think on Baillet's chapter of Ent fans celebres, he might have made on this occasion a very entertaining dissertation on early excellence.

He comes next to the Essay on Criticism, the stupendous performance of a youth not yet twenty years old; and after having detailed the felicities of condition, to which he imagines Pope to have owed his wonderful prematurity of mind, he tells us that he is well informed this essay was first written in prose. There is nothing improbable in the report, nothing indeed but what is more likely than the contrary; yet I hint to this writer and all others, the

cannot forbear to danger and weak

* In all the papers and criticisms Dr. Johnson wrote for the Literary Magazine, he frequently departs from the customary we, of anonymous writers. This, with his inimitable style soon pointed him out as the principal person concerned in that publication.

C.

ness of trusting too readily to information. Nothing but experience could evince the frequency of false information, or enable any man to conceive that so many groundless reports should be propagated as every man of eminence may hear of himself. Some men relate what they think as what they know; some men of confused memories and habitual inaccuracy ascribe to one man what belongs to another; and some talk on without thought or care. A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.

He proceeds on examining passage after passage of this essay; but we must pass over all these criticisms to which we have not something to add or to object, or where this author does not differ from the general voice of mankind. We cannot agree with him in his censure of the comparison of a student advancing in science with a traveller passing the Alps, which is perhaps the best simile in our language; that in which the most exact resemblance is traced between things in appearance utterly unrelated to each other. That the last line conveys no new idea, is not true; it makes particular what was before general. Whether the description which he adds from another author be, as he says, more full and striking than that of Pope, is not to be inquired. Pope's description is relative, and can admit no greater length than is usually allowed to a simile, nor any other particulars than such as form the correspondence.

Unvaried rhymes, says this writer, highly disgust readers of a good ear. It is surely not the ear but the The fault arising from the use of

mind that is offended.

common rhymes is, that by reading the past line the

second may be guessed, and half the composition loses the grace of novelty.

On occasion of the mention of an alexandrine, the critic observes, that "the alexandrine may be thought a modern measure, but that Robert of Gloucester's wife is an alexandrine, with the addition of two syllables; and that Sternhold and Hopkins translated the psalms in the same measure of fourteen syllables, though they are printed otherwise.

This seems not to be accurately conceived or expressed; an alexandrine with the addition of two syllables, is no more an alexandrine than with the detraction of two sył lables. Sternhold and Hopkins did generally write in the alternate measure, of eight and six syllables; but Hopkins commonly rhymed the first and third, Sternhold only the second and fourth; so that Sternhold may be considered as writing couplets of long lines; but Hopkins wrote regular stanzas. From the practice of printing the long lines of fourteen syllables in two short lines, arose the license of some of our poets, who, though professing to write in stanzas, neglected the rhymes of the first and third lines.

Pope has mentioned Petronius among the great names of criticism, as the remarker justly observes, without any critical merit. It is to be suspected that Pope had never read his book, and mentioned him on the credit of two or three sentences which he had often seen quoted, imagining that where there was so much there must necessarily be more. Young men in haste to be renown ed, too frequently talk of books which they have scarcely

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