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lume, to which the following anecdote must be added, which I lately received from one of his intimate friends: "I wrote things (said POPE) I am ashamed to say how soon; part of my epic poem ALCANDER, when about twelve. The scene of it lay at Rhodes, and some of the neighbouring islands; and the poem opened under the water, with a description of the court of Neptune. That couplet on the circulation of the blood, which I afterwards inserted in the Dunciad,

"As man's meanders to the vital spring

"Roll all their tides, then back their circles bring,

was originally in this poem, word for word."

The first of these Imitations is of Chaucer; as it paints neither characters nor manners like his original, as it is the only piece of our author's works that is loose and indecent, and as therefore I wish it had been omitted in the present edition, I shall speak no more of it.

* Page 78.

The

The Imitation of Spenser is the second; it is a description of an alley of fishwomen. He that was unacquainted with Spenser, and was to form his ideas of the turn and manner of his genius from this piece, would undoubtedly suppose that he abounded in filthy images, and excelled in describing the lower scenes of life. But the characteristics of this sweet and amiable allegorical poet, are not only strong and circumstantial imagery, but tender and pathetic feeling, a most melodious flow of versification, and a certain pleasing melancholy in his sentiments, the constant companion of an elegant taste, that casts a delicacy and grace over all his compositions. To imitate Spenser on a subject that does not partake of the pathos, is not giving a true representation of him; for he seems to be more awake and alive to all the softnesses of nature, than almost any writer I can recollect. There is an assemblage of disgusting and disagreeable sounds in the following stanza of POPE, which one is almost tempted to think, if it were possible, had been contrived as a contrast, or rather burlesque, of a most exquisite stanza in the FAERY QUEEN.

The

The snappish cur (the passengers annoy)
Close at my heel with yelping treble flies s;
The whimp'ring girl, and hoarser-screaming boy,
Join to the yelping treble, shrilling cries;
The scolding quean to louder notes doth rise,
And her full pipes those shrilling cries confound;
To her full pipes the grunting hog replies;

The grunting hogs alarm the neighbours round,

And curs, girls, boys, and scolds, in the deep base are drown'd.

The

very turn of these numbers bears the closest resemblance with the following, which are of themselves a complete concert of the most delicious music.

The joyous birds, shrouded in chearful shade,
Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet;
Th' angelical, soft trembling voices made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver-sounding instruments did meet
With the base murmur of the water's fall ;
The water's fall with difference discreet,
Now soft, now loud unto the wind did call ;
The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.

*

These images, one would have thought, were peculiarly calculated to have struck the fancy of our young imitator with so much admiration, ast

* Book II. Canto 12. Stanza 71.

not

not to have suffered him to make a kind of travesty of them.

The next stanza of POPE represents some allegorical figures, of which his original was so

fond.

Hard by a sty, beneath a roof of thatch,
Dwelt OBLOQUY, who, in her early days,
Baskets of fish at Billingsgate did watch,
Cod, whiting, oyster, mackarel, sprat, or plaice:
There learn'd she speech from tongues that never cease.
SLANDER beside her, like a magpie chatters,

With ENVY (spitting cat) dread foe to peace;

Like a curs'd cur, MALICE before her clatters,

And vexing every wight, tears cloaths and all to tatters.

But these personages of Obloquy, Slander, Envy, and Malice; are not marked with any distinct attributes; they are not those living figures,*

whose

* Mr. Hume is of opinion, that the perusal of Spenser becomes tedious to almost all his readers. "This effect, (says he, History of England, page 738.) of which every one is conscious, is usually ascribed to the change of manners; but manners have more changed since Homer's age, and yet that poet remains still the favourite of every reader of taste and judgment. Homer copied true natural manners, which, however rough and uncultivated, will always form an agree

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whose attitudes and behaviour Spenser has minutely drawn with so much clearness and truth, that we behold them with our eyes, as plainly as we do on the cieling of the banqueting-house. For, in truth, the pencil of Spenser is as powerful as that of Rubens, his brother allegorist; which two artists resembled each other in many respects; but Spenser had more grace, and was as warm a colourist. Among a multitude of objects delineated with the utmost force,* which

we

able and pleasing picture; but the pencil of the English poet was employed in drawing the affectations, and conceits, and fopperies, of chivalry, which appear ridiculous as soon as they lose the recommendation of the mode." But they had not ceased to be the mode in Spenser's time.

* Whence it came to pass that Spenser did not give his poem the due simplicity, coherence, and unity, of a legitimate Epopea, the reader may find in Mr. Hurd's entertaining letter to Mr. Mason, on the Marks of imitation, pag. 19, and in Observations on the Faery Queen, pag. 2, 3, 4. "How happened it (says Mr. Hurd) that Sir Philip Sydney, in his Arcadia, and afterwards Spenser, in his Faery Queen, observed so unnatural a conduct in those works; in which the story proceeds, as it were, by snatches, and with continual interruptions? How was the good sense of those writers, so conversant besides in the best models of antiquity, seduced into this preposterous method? The answer, no doubt, is, that they were copying the design, or disorder rather, of Ariosto,

the

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