The other sports likewise of setting, shooting, and hunting are described with great beauty.

The following lines are finely descriptive, and at the fame time pathetic. After having described a pheasant shot, he gives way to the following moving exclamation.

"Ah! what avail his gloffy, varying dyes, "His purple creft, and fcarlet-circled eyes, "The vivid green his shining plumes unfold, "His painted wings, and breast that flames " with gold?"

The following lines in the ftag-chafe, likęwife are inimitably fine.

"Th' impatient courfer pants in ev'ry vein, "And pawing, seems to beat the distant plain "Hills, vales, and floods appear already crofs'd, "And ere he starts, a thousand steps are loft."

The first two lines are translated from Statius.

"Stare adeo miferum eft, pereunt veftigia mille

"Ante fugam, abfentemque ferit gravis ungula campum.”

Thefe lines, Mr. Dryden, in his preface to his tranflation of Fresnoy's Art of Painting, calls wonderfully fine; and fays, "they would coft him an hour, if he had the leisure, "to tranflate them, there is fo much beauty in the original;" which probably excited Mr. POPE to try his art with them.

1❝See the bold youth strain up the threat'ning is fteep,

"Rush through the thickets, down the valleys fweep,

Hang o'er their courfers heads with eager

fpeed,

"And earth rolls back beneath the flying fteed."

Many other, and more ftriking inftances of Mr. POPE's talent for description, appear in the course of his works, and fome will be taken notice of in their proper places.

It is certain, that defcriptive poetry can claim but a very fubordinate rank in the scale of poe tical excellence. As the learned editor of his works has observed, it is the office of a pictorefque imagination to brighten and adorn good fenfe; fo that to employ it only in defcription, is like childrens delighting in a prifm for the fake of its gaudy colours, which when frugally managed and skilfully difpofed, might be made to represent and illuftrate the nobleft objects in

nature.

Indeed our poet himself thought meanly of defcriptive poetry, which he humorously obferved was a compofition as abfurd as a feaft made up of fauces: And in his epiftle to Dr. Arbuthnot, he speaks flightly of this fort of merit, where he fays

Who could take offence

"While pure Description held the place of "Senfe ?"

Mr. POPE, however, has not failed in this to take every occafion of adorning good and he fometimes, as our critic obferves, introduces moral fentences and inftructions in an oblique and indirect manner, in places where one expects only painting and amusement. Thus we have virtue, as our poet himfelf remarks*, put upon us by furprize, and are pleased to find a thing where we should never have looked to meet with it.

Among other specimens of this distinguishing excellence, our critic has candidly felected the following, where, after speaking of hare-hunting, the poet fubjoins

"Beafts, urg'd by us, their fellow-beafts purfue, "And learn of man each other tot undo."

The manly indignation and generous freedom likewife with which our poet fpeaks of the ravages of the Norman kings, deferves to be admired. After defcribing the beauties of the foreft, he thus breaks forth

Iliad, b. 16. in the notes, ver. 465.

To undo is unpoetical, and the expletive To makes the

line halt.

"Not thus the land appear'd in ages paft, "A dreary defert, and a gloomy waste, "To favage beafts and favage laws a prey, And kings more furious and severe ‡than they; "Who claim'd the fkies, difpeopled air and "floods,

"The lonely lords of empty wilds and woods: "Cities laid waste, they ftorm'd the dens and " caves,

"(For wifer brutes were backward to be flaves;) "What could be free, when lawless beafts "obey'd,

"And ev❜n the elements a Tyrant fway'd?"

This leads our poet to lament the miseries confequential of fuch devaftation, which he bewails with amiable sensibility.

"In vain kind seasons swell'd the teeming grain, "Soft fhow'rs diftill'd, and funs grew warm " in vain ;

"The fwain with tears his fruftrate labour "yields,

"And famish'd dies amidst his ripen'd fields."

Our poet clofes this melancholy fcene of defolation, with one of the finest pieces of defcription that can be imagined.

"The levell'd towns with weeds lie cover'd o'er; "The hollow winds thro' naked temples roar;

The laft epithet here feems to weaken the force of the former.

"Round

"Round broken columns clafping ivy twin'd; "O'er heaps of ruin stalk'd the stately hind; "The fox obfcene to gaping tombs retires, "And favage howlings fill the facred quires."

But the groupe of allegorical perfonages towards the conclufion, are confeffed to be worthy the pencil of Rubens, or Julio Romano. The effayift candidly owns that Virgil, in describing the inhabitants of Hell's portal, has exhibited no images fo lively and distinct, as the following living pictures painted by POPE, each of them with their proper infignia or attributes.

"ENVY her own fnakes fhall feel,

"And PERSECUTION mourn her broken

"wheel:

"There FACTION roar, REBELLION bite " her chain,

"And gasping furies thirst for blood in vain *."

After the feveral inftances of beautiful defcription, which our critic himself has applauded, together with others, which will be felected or refer

The critic affures us he was informed by a person of no fmall rank, that Mr. Addifon was inexpreffibly chagrined at this noble conclufion of WINDSOR, FOREST, both as a politician and as a poet. As a politician, because it so highly celebrated that treaty of peace which he deemed fo pernicious to the liberties of Europe; and as a poet, because he was deeply conscious that his own Campaign, that gazette in rhyme, contained no ftrokes of fuch genuine and fublime poetry, as the conclufion before us.

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