Stretch'd like a peaceful lake the deep fubfides,
And the pitch'd veffel o'er the furface glides.
When things are small, the terms should still be fo;
For low words please us when the theme is low.
But when fome giant, horrible and grim,
Enormous in his gait, and vaft in ev'ry limb,
Stalks tow'ring on; the fwelling words must rise
In just proportion to the monster's fize.

If fome large weight his huge arms strive to shove, The verse too labours; the throng'd words fcarce move. When each stiff clod beneath the pond'rous plough Crumbles and breaks, th' encumber'd lines must flow. Nor lefs, when pilots catch the friendly gales,

Unfurl their shrouds, and hoift the wide-ftretch'd fails. But if the poem fuffers from delay,

Let the lines fly precipitate away,

And when the viper iffues from the brake,

Be quick; with ftones, and brands, and fire, attack His rifing creft, and drive the ferpent back.

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When night descends, or stunn'd by num'rous strokes,
And groaning, to the earth drops the vast ox;
The line too finks with correfpondent found,
Flat with the steer, and headlong to the ground.
When the wild waves subside, and tempests cease,
And hufh the roarings of the fea to peace;
So oft we see the interrupted strain
Stop'd in the midft-and with the filent main
Pause for a space-at laft it glides again.
When Priam ftrains his aged arms, to throw
His unavailing jav'line at the foe;

(His blood congeal'd, and ev'ry nerve unftrung)
Then with the theme complies the artful fong;
Like him, the folitary numbers flow,
Weak, trembling, melancholy, stiff and slow.
Not fo young Pyrrhus, who with rapid force
Beats down embattled armies in his courfe.

K 4

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The

The raging youth on trembling Ilion falls,

Burns her ftrong gates, and shakes her lofty walls;
Provokes his flying courfer to the speed,

In full career to charge the warlike steed:

He piles the field with mountains of the flain;

He pours, he storms, he thunders thro' the plain. PITT.

From the Italian gardens Pope feems to have transplanted this flower, the growth of happier climates, into a foil less adapted to its nature, and less favourable to its increase.

Soft is the ftrain, when Zephyr gently blows,

And the smooth ftream in fmoother numbers flows;
But when loud billows lafh the founding fhore,
The hoarse rough verse should 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.

From these lines, laboured with great attention, and celebrated by a rival wit, may be judged what can be expected from the moft diligent endeavours after this imagery of found. The verfe intended to represent the whisper of the vernal breeze, must be confeffed not much to excel in foftnefs or volubility and the smooth stream runs with a perpetual clash of jarring confonants. The noise and turbulence of the torrent, is, indeed, diftinctly imaged, for it requires very little skill to make our language rough but in these lines, which mention the effort of Ajax, there is no particular heaviness, obftruction, or delay. The fwiftnefs of Camilla is rather

contrafted

contrasted than exemplified; why the verfe fhould be lengthened to express speed, will not easily be difcovered. In the dactyls used for that purpose by the ancients, two fhort fyllables were pronounced with fuch rapidity, as to be equal only to one long; they, therefore, naturally exhibit the act of paffing through a long space in a fhort time. But the Alexandrine, by its pause in the midst, is a tardy and stately meafure; and the word unbending, one of the most fluggifh and flow which our language affords, cannot much accelerate its motion.

These rules and thefe examples have taught our present criticks to inquire very ftudiously and minutely into founds and cadences. It is, therefore, ufeful to examine with what skill they have proceeded; what discoveries they have made; and whether any rules can be established which may guide us hereafter in fuch researches.

NUMB. 93. TUESDAY, February 5, 1751.

Experiar quid concedatur in illos

Quorum flaminia tegitur cinis atque Latiná.

More fafely truth to urge her claim prefumes,

On names now found alone on books and tombs.

Juv.

THERE are few books on which more time is spent by young ftudents, than on treatises which deliver the characters of authors; nor any which oftner deceive the expectation of the reader, or fill his mind with more opinions which the progrefs of his ftudies and the increase of his knowledge oblige him to refign.

Baillet has introduced his collection of the deci fions of the learned, by an enumeration of the prejudices which mislead the critick, and raise the paffions in rebellion against the judgment. His catalogue, though large, is imperfect; and who can hope to complete it? The beauties of writing have been obferved to be often fuch as cannot in the present state of human knowledge be evinced by evidence, or drawn out into demonftrations; they are therefore wholly fubject to the imagination, and do not force their effects upon a mind preoccupied by unfavourable fentiments, nor overcome the counter-action of a false principle or of ftubborn partiality.

To convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him against his will is juftly pronounced by Dryden to be above the reach of human

abilities.

abilities. Intereft and paffion will hold out long against the closesft fiege of diagrams and fyllogifms, but they are abfolutely impregnable to imagery and fentiment; and will for ever bid defiance to the most powerful strains of Virgil or Homer, though they may give way in time to the batteries of Euclid or Archimedes.

In trufting therefore to the fentence of a critick, we are in danger not only from that vanity which exalts writers too often to the dignity of teaching what they are yet to learn, from that negligence which fometimes fteals upon the most vigilant caution, and that fallibility to which the condition of nature has fubjected every human understanding; but from a thousand extrinsick and accidental causes, from every thing which can excite kindness or malevolence, veneration or contempt.

Many of those who have determined with great boldnefs upon the various degrees of literary merit, may be justly fufpected of having paffed fentence, as Seneca remarks of Claudius,

Una tantum parte audita,

Sæpe et nulla,

without much knowledge of the cause before them: for it will not eafily be imagined of Langbane, Borrichitus, or Rapin, that they had very accurately perused all the books which they praise or cenfure; or that, even if nature and learning had qualified them for judges, they could read for ever with the attention neceffary to just criticism. Such performances, however, are not wholly without their ufe; for they are commonly juft echoes to the voice of fame, and

tranfmit