A gaudy fop now sees and owns her charms, What parents yet could wealth and rank refuse? Their charms they paint, and urge her to obey; Belinda long the mighty charm withstood, Long firm remained, long to her Henry true, Her throbbing bosom mighty contests move, Some spirit now, by Jove's command, descends, To soul and body set congenial fire, Then teach the fame in transports to expire? While While I, my arrows blunt, my bow behind, Thus spoke the god of Love. From the other scale "Rulers of Heaven! but just be the decree! And Plutus reigns, and shall for ever reign. Then judge aright, and Cupid mounts in air. The lover starves, and beggared is the maid. Plunged in the depth of Dissipation's sea, As chance directs Belinda floats the main. And now, NARCISSA! would the plaintive Muse Did not thy soul with strong conviction plead, G & The The Moral Essays of Mr. Dallas next claim notice; and it is with the greatest satisfaction that we bestow on them our warm commendations. They contain much good sense, just observation, and exalted sentiment, joined to an uncommon spirit of benevolence and piety.-The following extract from the Vocabulary of Passions, an Essay of considerable learning and ingenuity, conveys very useful information to those persons who are intrusted with the education of youth, and exhibits at the same time a lively picture of the author's mind: Whatever study be the immediate object of the pupil's applica tion, the tutor's discourse should be always accompanied by the display of truth, of virtue, and of piety. His language will be adapted to the capacity of his hearer; with the forms of various languages he will instil real knowledge; and with knowledge, goodness. There is no profession in which excellence of mind, and superiority of intellect, is (are) more requisite. The understanding may be early led to enter upon the survey of itself, without leaving marks of pedantry behind. It is neither profound philosophy, nor the vain pretension to it, with which the imagination of children is to be clothed; but as their affections and passions arise, and as they appear in others, they are to be discovered, and pointed out, so that they may gain an habitual vigifance, in suppressing the noxious, and in moderating the best. To secure dominion over the latter, and yet to be constantly employed in their gratification, seem to be the secret of happiness; in other words, to be innocent and active. He, whose conscience reproaches him not, and who is unremittingly engaged in grateful pursuits, must, if penury or (ill) health prevent it not, be a contented man. To make others wise, or happy, should be the aim of every one who takes a pen into his hand. Oh that it were the lot of mine, to scatter only a few seeds of wisdom, or of bliss!-Man! thy passions are thy bane, and the bane of others; but be comforted, for it is in thy power to make them the sources of pleasure and delight." We shall conclude our extracts from this work by copying Mr. Dallas's concise definition of Gratitude; and this we do the more willingly, because some writers, who are not without admirers, have excluded it from the place which it had always occupied in the Catalogue of Virtues: • GRATITUDE. Gratitude is a warm affection, by which we are prompted to acknowledge kind offices, and to delight in praising and serving the person from whom we have received them. In this sense, it is an emotion, of which none but degenerate spirits can fail to be susceptible.' It will be evident, from our view of the present volume, that Mr. Dallas is a pleasing and judicious writer on moral subjects, and that his lighter effusions in poetry may amuse a circle of acquaintance: but that in the higher walks of this species species of composition he is not, according to the present specimen, so happily calculated to excel as the partiality of his friends may seduce them to imagine. ART. XIII. The Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer. Translated by Alexander Pope, Esq. A new Edition, with additional Notes, critical and illustrative. By Gilbert Wakefield, B. A. In eleven Volumes 8vo. 31. 178. Boards. Longman, Cadell jun. and Davies, &c. &c. 1796. TH HE manner and merits of Mr. Wakefield as an editor are so well known to the public by former specimens, which have met with due notice in our periodical Numbers, that we conceive it unnecessary for us to enter into any considerable details concerning the publication before us. It is an elegant and valuable edition of a performance which docs peculiar honour to English literature; and we doubt not that it will be gratefully received by those who wish to complete their sets of the works of Pope, according to the improved form lately given to the original and miscellaneous part of them in the edition of Dr. Warton. The mass of the notes subjoined to these translations consists of those of Pope's own editions, but a considerable number are added by Mr. Wakefield; the general purpose of which is to point out all the hints that Pope received from former translators, or other writers of English poetry, either in his diction, strain of versification, or even in the mechanism of his rhymes. By these approximations, many comparisons of excellence are suggested, in which the editor displays his usual delicacy of feeling with respect to the more minute beauties of poetry; and though, perhaps, in some instances he may be thought to have descended to uninteresting particulars, yet every reader, who has acquired a true relish for this delightful art, will find much amusement in attending him through the progress of his labours. The only continued piece of writing by Mr. W. in this publication is a series of General Observations relative to Homer and his Translator,' inserted between the Iliad and the Odyssey, at the beginning of the first volume of the latter. This commences with some remarks concerning the time at which Homer lived, and the probability of his having had a number of predecessors in the composition of Greek poetry. It then discusses the point of the translator's skill in the learned languages; which Mr. W., from the strongest internal evidence, concludes to have been smaller than even those among Pope's biographers who have made the greatest concessions have represented. Gg 2 He He next considers the faults of the translation itself, which he arranges under the heads of want of fidelity, want of simplicity, unnecessary and incongruous additions, careless or injudicious omissions, and defective rhymes. These are slightly touched, and are, in general, obvious to the attentive reader. After some ingenious observations on the fitness of Dryden to have been a translator of Homer, and Pope of Virgil, Mr. W. gives a sketch of the characters of the poetical translators ef Homer who preceded and who succeeded Pope. Our readers will probably receive entertainment from a transcript of this part: Chapman was not destitute of genius. His expression is copious, diversified, and vigorous; his execution, spirited, and occasionally rising into sublimity. The effect, however, of his translation is much weakened by paraphrastical prolixity and unauthorised interpolatious to a dece of frivolous puerility and wild licentiousness. His phrases and epithets are sometimes eminently happy of which, and of his rhymes, our poet will be shewn to have availed himself on many occasions with little ceremony and no scrupulous acknowledgement of obligation. Such redundancy of sentiment and bold luxu riance of language afforded many opportunities of selecting flowers to so careful a scrutinizer in the wilds of Poetry, as the bee of Twickenham. . Hobbes is stiff, jejune, and crabbed; devoid of ornament, and destitute of taste: he cramps, huddles, mutilates, and burlesques his author: he is coarse, and vulgar, and flat beyond the insipidity of verbal prose. Homer, in the hands of the rigid philosopher of Malmsbury, undergoes the harsh discipline of the dwarfs compressed in boxes by the ancients *. The unmerciful strictures of the operator not only prevent an appearance of the body in it's native form and just proportions, but crush it to deformity. A translator like this, in all respects illaudable, could have but slender charms for the hilarity and elegance of a teeming fancy and an improved taste: and accordingly the obligations of Pope to Hobbes are few and trivial. The chief merit of Ogilby consists in a commendable and uniform fidelity to the sense of his author. As a poet, his pretensions to praise of any kind can scarcely be supported: he has neither animation of thought, accuracy of taste, sensibility of feeling, nor ornament of diction. Yet our translator will be found to have consulted his version with unremitting steadiness, and to have profited by his rhymes in more instances than would be previously supposed. similar structure of his versification may be reasonably deemed a principal cause of such particular attention from Pope, who reflects upon this translator, by condescending to borrow from him an honour, which his own solitary efforts would never have procured; and has thus secured, perhaps, the future existence of a version, just sinking into the gulph of perpetual oblivion. *See Longinus de Sub. sect. ult.' The 6 Pretty! |