deal of entertaining matter about Boccaccio and Chaucer, and Rabelais and La Fontaine *. . It is from this part I have chofe to extract a fpecimen of our author's mode of writing, which fhall be a digreffion on Dryden. I should have preferred indeed a still more fplendid paffage (if any one part of fuch a work can be called more fplendid than another) on the excellency of circumstantial imagery in poetry, if I had not been afraid the various languages from which the examples are taken might not be equally familiar to all readers; but this will do to fhew with what words Tully, Longinus, and Quintilian, ufed to praife the mafters of the human mind, at the fame time that it will teach us how a poet is to be praised.

"The tale to which this is the Prologue, has been verfified by Dryden; and is fuppofed to have been of Chaucer's own contrivance as is alfo the elegant VISION of the flour and the leaf, which has received new graces from the fpirited and harmonious Dryden. It is to his fables, though wrote in his old age 1, that Dryden will owe his immortality, and among them particularly to Palamon and Arcite, Sigifinunda and Guilcardo, Theodore and Honoria; and to his Mufic ode. The warmth and melody of thefe picces, has never been excelled in our lan guaged, I mean in rhyme. As general and unexemplified criticilm is always ufelefs and abfurd, I muft beg leave to felect a few paffages from these three poems, and the reader must not think any obfervations on the character of Dryden, the conftant pattern of POPE, unconnected with the main fubject of this work. The picture of Arcite in the abfence of Emilia, is highly expreffive of the deepeft diftrefs, and a compleat image of anguish.

He rav'd with all the madness of despair,

He roar'd, he beat his breaft, he tore his hair.

* Dr. Warton wishes with reafon, that, inftead of The Wife of Bath, the choice of which nothing but his youth could excufe, Pope had ercifed his pencil on the pathetic ftory of The Patience of Grifelda, e Troilus and Creifida, or the Complaint of the Black Knight, or, above all, on Canbufcan and Canace.

P. 222.

The falling off of his hair, faid a man of wit, had no other consequence, than to make his laurels to be teen the more. A person who tranflated fome pieces after Dryden ufed to fay,

Experto credi e, quantus

In clypeum affurgat, quo turbine torqueat haftam.

Crebillon was ninety when he brought his Catiline on the stage.

Dry

Dry forrow in his ftupid eyes appears,

For, wanting nourishment, he wanted tears:
His eye-balls in their hollow fockets fink,
Bereft of fleep he loaths his meat and drink;
He withers at his heart, and looks as wan,
As the pale fpectre of a murder'd man *.

"The image of the Suicide is equally pi&turefque and påthetic.

The flayer of himself yet faw I there

The gore congeal'd was clotted in his hair:

With eyes half-clos'd and gaping month he lay,

And grim, as when he breath'd his fullen foul away.

This reminds me of that forcible defcription in a writer whofe fancy was eminently ftrong. "Catilina vero, longe a fuis, inter hoftium cadavera repertus eft, paululum etiam fpirans ;, "ferociamque animi, quam habuerat vivus, in vultu retinens. Nor muft i omit that affecting image in Spenfer, who ever excels in the pathetic,

And him befides there lay upon the grass

A dreary corfe, whofe life away did pafs,
All wallow'd in his own, yet lukewarm, blood,
That from his wound yet welled fṛefh, alas;
In which a rusty knife faft fixed food,

And made an open paffage for the gufhing flood t.
When Palamon perceived his rival had efcaped,

He ftares, he ftamps the ground;

The hollow tower with clamour rings around:
With briny tears he bath'd his fetter'd feet,
And dropp'd all o'er with agony of weat.

Nor are the feelings of Palamon less strongly impreffed on the reader, where he fays,

The rage of Jealoufy then fir'd his foul,
And his face kindled like a burning coal :
Now cold despair fucceeding in her ftead,
To livid palenefs turn'd the glowing red t

"If we pafs on from defcriptions of perfons to thofe of things, we shall find this poem equally excellent. The temple of Mars,

*Palamon and Arcite, Book I.

Fairy Queen, Book I. Canto 9. Stanza 36.

Thefe paffages are chiefly of the pathetic fort; for which Dryden in his tragedies is far from being remarkable. But it is not unusual for the fame perfon to fucceed in defcribing externally a distressful character, who may miferably fail in putting proper words in the mouth of fuch a character. In a word, fo much more difficult is DRAMATIC than DESCRIPTIVE poetry!

VOL. I.

B

is

is fituated with propriety, in a country defolate and joyless; all around it,

The landscape was a foreft wide and bare;

Where neither beast nor human kind repair;
The fowl, that fcent afar, the borders fly,
And fhun the bitter blast, and wheel about the sky.
A cake of fcurf lies wheeling on the ground,

And prickly ftubs inftead of trees are found.

"The temple itfelf is nobly and magnificently ftudied; and, at the fame time, adapted to the furious nature of the God to whom it belonged; and carries with it a barbarous and tremendous idea.

The frame of burnish'd feel that cast a glare
From far, and seem'd to thaw the freezing air.
A ftrait long entry to the temple led,
Blind with high walls and horror over-head:
Thence iffued fuch a blaft and hollow roar,

That threaten'd from the hinge to heave the door,
In through the door a northern light there fhone,
'Twas all it had, for windows there were none.
The gate of adamant, eternal frame,

Which hew'd by Mars himself from Indian quarries came. This feene of terror is judiciously contrafted by the pleafing and joyous imagery of the temples of Venus and Diana. The figure of the laft goddefs is a defign fit for GUIDO to execute.. The graceful Goddess was array'd in green;

About her feet were little beagles feen,

That watch'd with UPWARD eyes the motions of their queen. But above all, the whole defcription of the entering the lifts *, and of the enfuing combat, which is told at length, in the middle of the third book, is marvellously fpirited; and fo lively, as to make us fpectators of that interefting and magnificent tournament. Even the abfurdity of feigning ancient heroes, fuch as Thefeus and Lycurgus, prefent at the lifts and a modern combat, is overwhelmed and obliterated amidst the blaze, the pomp, and the profufion of fuch animated poetry. Frigid and phlegmatic must be the critic, who could have leifure dully and foberly to attend to the anachronism on so striking an occafion. The mind is whirled away by a torrent of rapid imagery, and propriety is forgot.

*The reader is defired all along to remember, that the first delinea tion of all thefe images is in Chaucer, and it might be worth examining how much Dryden has added purely from his own ftock.

* The

"The tale of Sigifmonda and Guifcardo is heightened with many new and affecting touches by Dryden. I fhall felect only the following picture of Sigifmonda, as it has the fame attitude in which the appears in a famous piece of Correggio. Mute, folemn forrow, free from female noife, Such as the Majefty of grief deftroys:

For bending o'er the cup, the tears the fhed
Seem'd by the pofture to discharge her head,
O'erfill'd before; and oft (her mouth apply'd
To the cold heart) she kifs'd at once and cry'd.

"There is an incomparable wildness in the vifion of Theodore and Honoria*, that reprefents the furious picture of "the horfeman ghost that came thundering for his prey," and of the gaunt mastiffs that tore the fides of the fhrieking damfel he purfued; which is a fubject worthy the pencil of Spagnoletti, as it partakes of that favagenefs which is fo ftriking to the imagination. I fhall confine myfelf to point out only two paffages, which relate the two appearances of this formidable figure: and I place them laft, as I think them the most lofty of any part of Dryden's works.

Whilft lift ning to the murm'ring leaves he flood,
More than a mile immers'd within the wood,
At once the wind was laid-the whisp'ring found
Was dumb-a rifing earthquake rock'd the ground:
With deeper brown the grove was overspread,
And his ears tingled, and his colour fled.

The fenfations of a man upon the approach of fome ftrange and fupernatural danger, can scarcely be reprefented more feelingly. All nature is thus faid to fympathize at the fecond appearance

of

The felon on his fable steed

Arm'd with his naked fword that urg'd his dogs to fpeed. Thus it runs

The fiend's alarm began; the hollow found

Sung in the leaves, the foreft fhook around,

Air blacken'd, roll'd the thunder, groan'd the ground.

*This is one of Boccace's most serious stories. "It is a curious. thing to fee at the head of an edition of Boccace's tales, printed at Florence in 1573, a privilege of Gregory XIII. who fays, that in this he' follows the fteps of Pius V. his predeceffor, of bleffed memory, and which threatens with fevere punishments all thofe, who fhall dare to give any disturbance to thofe bookfellers to whom this privilege is granted. There is alfo a decree of the inquifition in favour of this edition, in which the holy father caufed fome alterations to be made." LONGUERUANA, Tom. II. p. 62. à Berlin, 1754

"But to conclude this digreffion on Dryden. It must be owned, that this ode on the power of mufic, which is the chief ornament of this volume, is the most unrivalled of his compo¬ fitions. By that ftrange fatality which feems to difqualify authors from judging of their own works, he does not appear to have valued this piece, becaufe he totally omits it in the enumeration and criticifm he has given, of the reft, in his preface to the volume. I fhall add nothing to what I have already faid on this fubject *; but only ell the occafion and manner of his writing it. Mr. St. John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, happening to pay a morning vifit to Dryden, whom he always refpected †, found him in an unusual agitation of fpirits, even to a trembling. On enquiring the cause, "I have been up all night, replied the old bard; my mufical friends made me promife to write them an ode for their feaft of St. Cæcilia: I have been fo ftruck with the fubject which occurred to me, that I could not leave it till I had completed it; here it is, finished at one fitting." And immediately he fhewed him this ode, which places the British lyric poetry above that of any other nation. This anecdote, as true as it is curious, was imparted by Lord Bolingbroke to Mr. Pope, by Pope to Mr. Gilbert Weft, by him to the ingenious friend who communicated it to me. The rapidity, and yet the perfpicuity of the thoughts, the glow and the expreffivenefs of the images, thofe certain marks of the first sketch of a mafter, confpire to corroborate the truth of the fact."

In fpeaking of the tranflations, wihch come next, Dr. W. treats Statius and Ovid with great, and the former certainly, with juft, feverity ; but though the latter has many and great, faults, the caufe, of which are well afcribed by Vavaffor, (who is quoted,) to his having been firft intended for an orator, in an age when pointed and florid fentences began to be preferred to the founder beauties of a more mafculine compofition; which wretched taste he carried away with him from the fchools, and spoilt his poetry by it, ftill I cannot think

*

Vol. I. page 50.

+ See his verfes to Dryden, prefixed to the tranflation of Virgil. Lord Bolingbroke affured Pope, that Dryden often declared to him, that he got more from the Spanish critics alone, than from the Italian, French, and all other critics put together. This appears ftrange. Lord Bolingbroke learned Spanish in lefs than three weeks. Richard Berenger, Efq,

but