From nature's chain whatever link you strike,

Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

Pope seems to have caught the idea and image from Waller, whose last verse is as fine as any in the "Essay on Man:"

The chain that's fixed to the throne of Jove,
On which the fabric of our world depends,
One link dissolv'd, the whole creation ends.

Of the Danger his Majesty escaped, &c. v. 168.

It has been observed by Thyer, that Milton borrowed the expression imbrowned and brown, which he applies to the evening shade, from the Italian. See Thyer's elegant note in B. iv., v. 246:

And where the unpierced shade

Imbrowned the noon tide bowers.

And B. ix., v. 1086:

Where highest woods impenetrable

To sun or star-light, spread their umbrage broad,
And brown as evening.

Fa l'imbruno is an expression used by the Italians to denote the approach of the evening. Boiardo, Ariosto and Tasso, have made a very picturesque use of this term, noticed by Thyer. I doubt if it be applicable to our colder climate; but Thomson appears to have been struck by the fine effect it produces in poetical landscape; for he has

If the epithet be true, it cannot be more appropriately applied than in the season he describes, which most resembles the genial clime with the deep serenity of an Italian heaven. Milton in Italy had experienced the brown evening, but it may be suspected that Thomson only recollected the language of the poet.

The same observation may be made on two other poetical epithets. I shall notice the epithet "LAUGHING" applied to inanimate objects; and " PURPLE" to beautiful objects."

The natives of Italy and the softer climates receive emotions from the view of their WATERS in the SPRING not equally experienced in the British roughness of our skies.

The fluency and softness of the water are thus described by
Lucretius:-

Tibi suaveis Dædala tellus
Submittit flores: tibi RIDENT æquora ponti.

Inelegantly rendered by Creech,

The roughest sea puts on smooth looks, and SMILES.

Dryden more happily,

The ocean SMILES, and smooths her wavy breast.

But Metastasio has copied Lucretius:

A te fioriscono

Gli erbosi prat:
Ei flutti RIDONO
Nel mar placati.

It merits observation, that the Northern Poets could not exalt their imagination higher than that the water SMILED, while the modern Italian, having before his eyes a different Spring, found no difficulty in agreeing with the ancients, that the waves LAUGHED. Modern poetry has made a very free use of the animating epithet LAUGHING. Gray has LAUGHING FLOWERS: and Langhorne in two beautiful lines personifies Flora :

Where Tweed's soft banks in liberal beauty lie,
And Flora LAUGHS beneath an azure sky.

Sir William Jones, in the spirit of Oriental poetry, has "the LAUGHING AIR." Dryden has employed this epithet boldly in the delightful lines, almost entirely borrowed from his original, Chaucer:

The morning lark, the messenger of day,
Saluted in her song the morning gray;

And soon the sun arose, with beams so bright,

That all THE Horizon laughed to see the joyous sight.

Palamon and Arcite, B. ii.*

It is extremely difficult to conceive what the ancients

The old poet is the most fresh and powerful in his words. The passage is thus given in Wright's edition :

The busy lark, messenger of day,

Saluteth in her song the morrow gray;
And fiery Phoebus riseth up so bright,

That all the orient laugheth of the light.

Leigh Hunt remarks with justice that "Dryden falls short of the freshness and feeling of the sentiment. His lines are beautiful, but they do not come home to us with so happy and cordial a face."

precisely meant by the word purpureus. They seem to have designed by it anything BRIGHT and BEAUTIFUL. A classical friend has furnished me with numerous significations of this word which are very contradictory. Albinovanus, in his elegy on Livia, mentions Nivem purpureum. Catullus, Quercus ramos purpureos. Horace, Purpureo bibet nectar, and somewhere mentions Olores purpureos. Virgil has Purpuream vomit ille animam; and Homer calls the sea purple, and gives it in some other book the same epithet, when in a storm.

ore

The general idea, however, has been fondly adopted by the finest writers in Europe. The PURPLE of the ancients is not known to us. What idea, therefore, have the moderns affixed to it? Addison, in his Vision of the Temple of Fame, describes the country as "being covered with a kind of PURPLE LIGHT." Gray's beautiful line is well known:

The bloom of young desire and purple light of love.

And Tasso, in describing his hero Godfrey, says, Heaven
Gli empie d'onor la faccia, e vi riduce
Di Giovinezza il bel purpureo lume.

Both Gray and Tasso copied Virgil, where Venus gives to her son Æneas

Dryden has omitted the purple light in his version, nor is it given by Pitt; but Dryden expresses the general idea by - With hands divine,

Had formed his curling locks and made his temples skine,

And given his rolling eys a sparkling grace.

It is probable that Milton has given us his idea of what was meant by this purple light, when applied to the human countenance, in the felicitous expression of

CELESTIAL ROSY-RED.

Gray appears to me to be indebted to Milton for a hint for the opening of his Elegy: as in the first line he had Dante and Milton in his mind, he perhaps might also in the following passage have recollected a congenial one in Comus, which he altered. Milton, describing the evening, marks it out by

What time the laboured ox

In his loose traces from the furrow came,
And the swinkt hedger at his supper sat.

Gray has

The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way.

Warton has made an observation on this passage in Comus; and observes further that it is a classical circumstance, but not a natural one, in an English landscape, for our ploughmen quit their work at noon. I think, therefore, the imitation is still more evident; and as Warton observes, both Gray and Milton copied here from books, and not from life.

There are three great poets who have given us a similar incident.

Dryden introduces the highly finished picture of the hare in his Annus Mirabilis ::

Stanza 131.

So I have seen some fearful hare maintain
A course, till tired before the dog she lay;
Who stretched behind her, pants upon the plain,
Past power to kill, as she to get away.

132.

With his loll'd tongue he faintly licks his prey;
His warm breath blows her flix up as she lies:
She trembling creeps upon the ground away

And looks back to him with beseeching eyes.

Thomson paints the stag in a similar situation:—
Fainting breathless toil

Sick seizes on his heart-he stands at bay:
The big round tears run down his dappled face,
He groans in anguish.

Autumn, v. 451.

Shakspeare exhibits the same object :

The wretched animal heaved forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase.

Of these three pictures the beseeching eyes of Dryden perhaps is more pathetic than the big round tears, certainly borrowed by Thomson from Shakspeare, because the former expression has more passion, and is therefore more poetical. The sixth line in Dryden is perhaps exquisite for its imitative harmony, and with peculiar felicity paints the action itself.

Thomson adroitly drops the innocent nose, of which one word seems to have lost its original signification, and the other offends now by its familiarity. The dappled face is a term more picturesque, more appropriate, and more poetically expressed.

EXPLANATION OF THE FAC-SIMILE.

THE manuscripts of Pope's version of the Iliad and Odyssey are preserved in the British Museum in three volumes, the gift of David Mallet. They are written chiefly on the backs of letters, amongst which are several from Addison, Steele, Jervaise, Rowe, Young, Caryl, Walsh, Sir Godfrey Kneller, Fenton, Craggs, Congreve, Hughes, his mother Editha, and Lintot and Tonson the booksellers.*

From these letters no information can be gathered, which merits public communication; they relate generally to the common civilities and common affairs of life. What little could be done has already been given in the additions to Pope's works.

It has been observed, that Pope taught himself to write, by copying printed books: of this singularity we have in this collection a remarkable instance; several parts are written in Roman and Italic characters, which for some time I mistook for print; no imitation can be more correct.

What appears on this Fac-Simile I have printed, to assist its deciphering; and I have also subjoined the passage as it was given to the public, for immediate reference. The manuscript from whence this page is taken consists of the first rude sketches; an intermediate copy having been employed for the press; so that the corrected verses of this Fac-Simile occasionally vary from those published.

This passage has been selected, because the parting of Hector and Andromache is perhaps the most pleasing episode in the Iliad, while it is confessedly one of the most finished passages.

The lover of poetry will not be a little gratified, when he contemplates the variety of epithets, the imperfect idea, the gradual embellishment, and the critical rasures which are

*This use of what most persons would consider waste paper, obtained for the poet the designation of "paper-sparing Pope."