While they ring round the same unvaried chimes, With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.' Melodious lines, such as the first verse in the first of these passages, which have the monosyllables relieved but by a single dissyllable, are past counting up. Addison praised Pope for exemplifying the faults in the language which condemned them. "The gaping of the vowels in the second line, the expletive 'do' in the third line, and the ten monosyllables in the fourth, give such a beauty to this passage, as would have been very much admired in an ancient poet." The feat was too easy to call for much admiration. There was more difficulty in eschewing than in mimicking the vicious style of bad versifiers. Pope himself has not avoided the frequent use of "low words" and "feeble expletives." 1 Atterbury's Preface to Waller's Poems: "He had a fine ear, and 350 355 knew how quickly that sense was cloyed by the same round of chiming words still returning upon it." 2 Hopkins's translation of Ovid's Met., book xi. : No tame nor savage beast dwells there; no At once inviting and assisting sleep.— Pope uses these trite ideas and "unvaried chimes himself. In the fourth Pastoral we have "gentle breeze, trembling trees, whispering breeze, dies upon the trees," and in Eloisa we have "the curling breeze, panting on the trees."-CROKER. Pope took the idea from Boileau : Si je louois Philis "en miracles féconde," Je trouverois bientôt, "à nulle autre seconde;" Si je voulois vanter un objet "nonpareil," Je mettrois à l'instant, "plus beau que le soleil;" Enfin, parlant toujours d'"astres" et de "merveilles," De "chefs-d'œuvres des cieux," de "beautés sans pareilles." 3 Dryden in his Annus Mirabilis, stanza 123: So glides the trodden serpent on the grass, Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes,' and know 2 And praise the easy vigour of a line, Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join.' True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,' As those move easiest who have learned to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense.” 1 Boileau's Art of Poetry translated by Soame and Dryden : Those tuneful readers of their own dull rhymes. 2 The construction might be for anything that the composition shows to the contrary, "leave such to praise," which is subversive of the poet's meaning.- WAKEFIELD. 3 Sufficient justice is not done to Sandys, who did more to polish and tune the English versification by his Psalms and his Job, than those two writers, who are usually applauded on this subject. -- WARTON. Bowles adds his testimony to "the extraordinary melody and vigour" of the versification of Sandys. Ruffhead, in his life of Pope, having called the Ovid of Sandys an "indifferent translation," Warburton has written on the margin, "He was not an indifferent, but a very fine translator and versifier." 4 Writers who seem to have composed with the greatest ease have exerted much labour in attaining this facility. It is well known that the writings of La Fontaine were laboured into that facility for which they are 8 300 365 370 so famous, with repeated alterations and many erasures. Moliere is reported to have passed whole days in fixing upon a proper epithet or rhyme, although his verses have all the flow and freedom of conversation. I have been informed that Addison was so extremely nice in polishing his prose compositions that when almost a whole impression of a Spectator was worked off he would stop the press to insert a new preposition or conjunc tion.-WARTON. 5 Lord Roscommon says: The sound is still a comment to the sense. -WARBURTON. The whole of this passage on the adaptation of the sound to the sense is imitated, and, as may be seen by the references of Warburton, is in part translated, from Vida's Art of Poetry. 6 Tum is læta canunt, &c. Vida, Poet. 1. iii. ver. 403.-WARBURTON. 7 Tum longe sale saxa sonant, &c. Vida, 8 Atque ideo si quid geritur molimine Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn,' and skims along the main.' Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise, And bid alternate passions fall and rise!' While at each change, the son of Libyan Jove 1 Our poet here endeavours to fasten on Virgil a most insufferable absurdity, which no poetical hyperbole will justify, namely, the reality of these wonderful performances, a flight over the unbending corn, and across the sea with unbathed feet. Virgil only puts the supposition, and speaks of her extraordinary velocity in the way of comparison, that she seemed capable of accomplishing so much had she made the attempt. She could fly, if she had chosen, nor would have injured, in that case, the tender blades of corn.-WAKEFIELD. 2 The verse intended to represent the whisper of the vernal breeze must surely be confessed not much to excel in softness or volubility; and the smooth stream runs with a perpetual clash of jarring consonants. The noise and turbulence of the torrent is, indeed, distinctly imaged; for it requires very little skill to make our language rough. But in the lines which mention the effort of Ajax, there is no particular heaviness or delay. The swiftness of Camilla is rather contrasted than exemplified. Why the verse should be lengthened to express speed, will not easily be discovered. In the dactyls, used for 375 380 that purpose by the ancients, two short syllables were pronounced with such rapidity, as to be equal only to one long; they therefore naturally exhibit the act of passing through a long space in a short time. But the Alexandrine, by its pause in the midst, is a tardy and stately measure; and the word "unbending," one of the most sluggish and slow which our language affords, cannot much accelerate its motion.-JOHNSON. Wakefield says that "the tripping word labours, in ver. 371, is unhappy," and Aaron Hill contended that three at least of the five concluding words of the line "danced away upon the tongue with a tripping and lyrical lightness." 3 See Alexander's Feast, or the Power of Music; an Ode by Mr. Dryden.-POPE. 4 This resembles a line in Hughes's Court of Neptune: Beholds th' alternate billows all and rise. -WAKEFIELD. And now and then, a sigh he stole, And tears began to flow. Dryden.— WAKEFIELD. 6 Pope confounds vocal and instru mental with poetical harmony. Timotheus owed his celebrity to his Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such, That always shows great pride, or little sense: Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best, Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move; For fools admire, but men of sense approve :' 38.5 390 As things seem large which we through mists descry, Dulness is ever apt to magnify. Some foreign writers, some our own despise; The ancients only, or the moderns prize. music, and Dryden never wrote a note. 1 Creech's translation of Horace's Art of Poetry: men of sense retire, The boys abuse, and only fools admire. Aaron Hill says, that Pope was very fond of the line in the text, and often repeated it. Hill, who "abhorred the sentiment," once asked him if he still adhered to the opinion of Longinus, that the true sublime thrilled and transported the reader. On Pope replying in the affirmative, his interrogator pressed him with the contradiction, and the perplexed poet, according to Hill's report, took refuge in nonsense, and made this unintelligible answer,-" that Longinus's remark was truth, but that, like certain truths of more importance, it required assent from faith, without the evidence of demonstration." It must be evident that Shakespeare, Milton, and scores besides, are worthy of admiration; and no man would show his sense by protesting that he did not admire but only approved of them. Pope is inconsistent, for at 236 he speaks of "rapture ver. 395 warming the mind," and of "the generous pleasure to be charmed with wit." 2 In all editions before the quarto of 1743, "Some the French writers." 3 This was directed against Pope's co-religionists, and greatly annoyed them. The offence was not that he had misrepresented their views, but that he had denounced a doctrine which all zealous papists maintained. "Nothing," he said, when writing in vindication of the passage to Caryll, "has been so much a scarecrow to our opponents as that too peremptory and uncharitable assertion of an utter impossibility of salvation to all but ourselves. I own to you I was glad of any opportunity to express my dislike of so shocking a sentiment as those of the religion I profess are commonly charged with, and I hoped a slight insinuation, introduced by a casual similitude only, could never have given offence, but on the contrary, must needs have done good in a nation wherein we are the smaller party, and consequently most misrepresented, and most in need of vindication." The Roman Catholics Meanly they seek the blessing to confine, But blame the false, and value still the true. Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own,' But catch the spreading notion of the town: They reason and conclude by precedent, And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. 400 405 410 Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then Of all this servile herd, the worst is he took to themselves the couplet "Meanly they seek," which followed the simile, but Pope pointed out that the plural "some," and not the singular "each man,' was the antecedent to "they." The comparison was not kept up throughout the paragraph, and the lines after ver. 397 refer solely to the critics. The word "enlights" is, I believe, of our poet's coinage, analogically formed from "light," as "enlighten" from "lighten."-WAKEFIELD. 415 420 And neither gives increase, nor brings decay. 3 There is very little poetical expression from this line to ver. 450. It is only mere prose fringed with rhyme. Good sense in a very prosaic style; reasoning, not poetry.--WAR ΤΟΝ. 4 "Joins with quality for "joins with men of rank" is a vulgar colloquialism. In sing-song Durfey, Oldmixon or me, 2 Sir Robert Howard's poem against was the original reading of the manu |