P

an Eclogue.

RINCES and Authors are feldom fpoken of, during their lives, with juftice and impartiality. Admiration and envy, their conftant attendants, like two unskilful artists, are apt to overcharge their pieces with too great a quantity of light or of shade; and are difqualified happily to hit upon that middle colour, that mixture of

error and excellence, which alone renders every representation of man juft and natural. This perhaps may be one reafon, among others, why we have never yet feen a fair and candid criticism on the character and merits of our laft great poet, Mr. POPE. I have therefore thought, that it would be no unpleafing amufement, or uninftructive employment to examine at large, without blind panegyric, or petulant invective, the writings of this English Claffic, in the order in which they are arranged in the elegant edition of Dr. Warburton. As I fhall neither cenfure nor commend, without alleging the reafon on which my opinion is founded, I fhall be entirely unmoved at the imputation of malignity, or the clamours of popular prejudice.

IT is fomewhat ftrange, that in the paftorals of a young poet there fhould not be found a fingle rural image that is new: but this, I am afraid, is the cafe in the PASTORALS before us. The ideas of Theocritus, Vir

gil, and Spenfer, are indeed here exhibited in language equally mellifluous and pure; but the descriptions and fentiments are trite and common.

THAT the defign of paftoral poefy is, to represent the undisturbed felicity of the golden age, is an empty notion, which, though fupported by a Rapin and a Fontenelle, 1 think, all rational critics have agreed to extirpate and explode. But I do not remember, that even thefe, or any critics have remarked the circumftance that gave origin to the opinion, that any golden age was intended. Theocritus, the father and the model of this enchanting fpecies of compofition, lived and wrote in Sicily The climate of Sicily was delicious, and the face of the country various, and beautiful: it's vallies and it's precipices, it's grottos and cafcades were SWEETLY INTERCHANGED, and it's flowers and fruits were lavish and lufcious. The poet defcribed what he faw and felt: and had no need to have recourfe to thofe artificial affemblages

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affemblages of pleafing objects, which are not to be found in nature. The figs and the honey, which he affigns* as a reward to a victorious fhepherd, were in themselves exquifite, and are therefore affigned with great propriety: and the beauties of that luxurious landscape so richly and circunftantially delineated in the close of the seventh idyllium, where all things finelt of fummer and fmelt of autumn,

Παντως δεν θέρει μάλα πινθ, ως δε δ' όπωςης το

were present and real. Succeeding writers fuppofing these beauties too great and abundant to be real, referred them to the fictitious and imaginary fcenes of a golden age.

A MIXTURE of British and Grecian ideas may juftly be deemed a blemish in the PASTORALS of POPE: and propriety is certainly violated, when he couples Pactolus with Thames, and Windfor with Hybla. Complaints of IMMODERATE heat, and wishes to be conveyed to cooling caverns, when uttered

Idyll. i. ver. 146.

+ Ver. 133.

by