Page images
PDF
EPUB

easily be subject to the delusion; but Narcissus had been in the world sixteen years, and was brother and son to the water-nymphs, and therefore to be supposed conversant with fountains long before this fatal mistake.

Ovid is very

P. 102. 1. 29.-" You trees," says he, &c. justly celebrated for the passionate speeches of his poem. They have generally abundance of nature in them, but I leave it to better judgment to consider whether they are not often too witty and too tedious. The poet never cares for smothering a good thought that comes in his way, and never thinks he can draw tears enough from his reader, by which means our grief is either diverted or spent before we come to his conclusion; for we cannot at the same time be delighted with the wit of the poet, and concerned for the person that speaks it; and a great critic bas admirably well observed, Lamentationes debent esse breves et concisa, nam lachryma subitò excrescit, et difficile est auditorem vel lectorem in summo animi affectu diu tenere. Would any one in Narcissus's condition have cried out-Inopem me copia fecit? Or can any thing be more unnatural than to turn off from his sorrows for the sake of a pretty reflection?

O utinam nostro secedere corpore possem!

Votnm in amante novum; vellem, quod amamus, abesset.

None, I suppose, can be much grieved for one that is so witty on his own afflictions. But I think we may every where observe in Ovid that he employs his invention more than his judgment, and speaks all the ingenious things that can be said on the subject, rather than those which are particularly proper to the person and circumstances of the speaker.

FAB. VII.

There is a great deal

P. 106. 1. 9.-Wnen Pentheus thus. of spirit and fire in this speech of Pentheus, but I believe none besides Ovid would have thought of the transformation of the serpent's teeth for an incitement to the Thebans' courage, when he desires them not to degenerate from their great forefather the dragon, and draws a parallel between the behaviour of them both.

Este, precor memores, quâ sitis stirpe creati,
Illiusque animos, qui multos perdidit unus,
Sumite serpentis: pro fontibus ille, lacuque
Interiit, at vos pro famâ vincite vestrâ.
Ille dedit Letho fortes, vos pellite molles,
Et patrium revocate Decus.

FAB. VIII.

The story of Acœtes has abundance of nature in all the parts of it, as well in the description of his own parentage and em. ployment, as in that of the sailors' characters and manners. But the short speeches scattered up and down in it, which make the Latin very natural, cannot appear so well in our language, which is much more stubborn and unpliant, and therefore are but as so many rubs in the story, that are still turning the narration out of its proper course. The transformation at the latter end is wonderfully beautiful.

FAB. IX.

Ovid has two very good similies on Pentheus, where he compares him to a river in a former story, and to a war-horse in the present.

POEMS

ON

SEVERAL OCCASIONS.

[TO MR. DRYDEN:-These lines, of which Johnson says, "in his twentysecond year he first shewed his power of English poetry by some verses addressed to Dryden,” hardly deserve the careful examination which Hurd has bestowed upon them. They were probably called forth by the publication of Tonson's Third Miscellany, which contained of Dryden's, beside a few songs, the first book of the Metamorphoses, with part of the ninth and sixteenth. Dryden, whom his politics and change of religion had driven, in his old age, to earn his bread by translating, was gratified by the applause of a promising scholar from the University of wnich he had writ

ten

"Oxford to him a dearer name sha' b

Than his own mother University:

Thebes did his green, unknowing youth engage;

He chooses Athens in his riper age;"

and an intercourse began, which if Macaulay's conjecture be true, had a decisive influence upon Addison's fortunes; for Dryden presented him to Congreve, and Congreve to Montague, afterwards Lord Halifax, one of his aliest and most efficient patrons.-G.j

[ocr errors]

TO MR. DRYDEN..

How long, great poet, shall thy sacred lays
Provoke our wonder, and transcend our praise?

Can neither injuries of time, or age,

Damp thy poetick heat, and quench thy rage ?

Not so thy Ovid in his exile wrote,

Grief chill'd his breast, and check'd his rising thought,
Pensive and sad, his drooping muse betrays

The Roman genius in its last decays.

Prevailing warmth has still thy mind possest,
And second youth is kindled in thy breast;
Thou mak❜st the beauties of the Romans known,b
And England boasts of riches not her own;

It would not be fair to criticise our author's poetry, especially the poetry of his younger days, very exactly. He was not a poet born; or, he had not studied, with sufficient care, the best models of English poetry. Whatever the cause might be, he had not the command of what Dryden so eminently possessed, a truly poetic diction. His poetry is only pure prose, put into verse.

And

"Non satis est puris versum perscribere verbis." However, it may not be amiss to point out the principal defects of his ex pression, that his great example may not be pleaded in excuse of them.

Thou makest, vide after, Thou teachest. This way of using verbs of the present and imperfect tense, in the second person singular, should be utterly banished from our poetry. The sound is intolerable. Milton and others have rather chosen to violate grammar itself, than offend the ear thus unmercifully. This liberty may, perhaps, be taken sometimes, in the greater poetry; in odes especially. But the better way will generally be to turn the expression differently: As 'Tis thine to teach, or in some such

way

« EelmineJätka »