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us, though the defign is in truth improved and heightened by the masterly hand of POPE. It is not improbable, that this fubject was fuggefted to our author, not only by Dryden's tranflations of Chaucer, of which POPE was fo fond, but likewife, by that celebrated paper of Addifon, in the Tatler, called the Tables of Fame, to which the great worthies of antiquity are introduced, and feated according to their refpective merits and characters; and which was published some years before this poem was written. Chaucer himfelf borrowed his defcription from Ovid, in the beginning of the twelfth book of his Metamorphofes, from whence he has closely copied the fituation and formation of the edifice.

Orbe locus medio eft inter terrafque fretumque,
Cœleftefque plagas, triplicis confinia mundi,
Unde quod eft ufquam, quamvis regionibus abfit,
Infpicitur, penetratque cavas vox omnis ad aures *.

Ovid has introduced fome allegorical perfonages, but has not diftinguished them with any picturefque epithets;

• Ver. 40.

Illic

Illic CREDULITAS, illic temerarius ERROR,
Vanaque LÆTITIA eft, confternatique TIMORES,
SEDITIOQUE recens, dubioque auctore SUSURRI*.

Dryden translated this paffage of Ovid; and POPE, who evidently formed himself upon Dryden, could not but have frequently read it with pleasure, particularly the following harmonious lines.

'Tis built of brafs, the better to diffuse

The spreading founds, and multiply the News;
Where echos in repeated echos play:

A mart for ever full, and open night and day.
Nor filence is within, nor voice express,
But a deaf noise of founds that never cease,
+ Confus'd, and chiding, like the hollow roar
Of tides, receding from th' infulted fhore:
Or like the broken thunder, heard from far,
When Jove to distance drives the rolling war.

• Ver. 63.

+ Confus'd, &c.

This is more poetically expreffed than the fame image in Our author.

Sudden I heard a wild promifcuous found,

Like broken thunders that at distance roar, Or billows murm'ring on the hollow shore. Dryden's lines are fuperior to the original. Qualia de pelagi, fiquis procul audiat, undis Vol. II.

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It is time to proceed to fome remarks on particular paffages of this Vifion; which I fhall do in the order in which they occur, not cenfuring or commending any, without a reafon affigned.

I. Nor was the work impair'd by forms alone,
But felt th' approaches of too warm a fun;
For fame, impatient of extremes, decays
Not more by envy, than excefs of praise.

DOES not this use of the heat of the fun, appear to be a puerile, and far-fetched conceit? What connection is there betwixt the two forts of exceffes here mentioned? My purpose in animadverting fo frequently, as I have done, on this fpecies of falfe thoughts, is to guard the reader, especially of the younger fort, from being betrayed by the authority of fo correct a writer as POPE, into fuch fpecious and falfe ornaments of ftile. For the fame reason, the oppofition of ideas in the three

Effe folent, qualemve fonum, cum Jupiter atras
Increpuit nubes, extrema tonitrua reddunt.

B. xii. V. 57.

In this paffage of Dryden are many inftances of the alliteration, which he has managed beautifully.

laft

laft words of the following line, may be condemned.

And legislators seem to think in ftone*.

2. So Zembla's rocks, the beauteous work of froft,
Rife white in air, and glitter o'er the coaft,
Pale funs, unfelt, at diftance roll away,
And on th' impaffive ice the light'nings play;
Eternal fnows the growing mass supply,

Till the bright mountains prop th' incumbent sky;
As Atlas fix'd each hoary pile appears,
The gather'd Winter of a thousand years †.

A REAL lover of painting, will not be contented with a fingle view and examination of this beautiful ‡ winter-piece, but will return to it again and again, with fresh delight. The images are diftinct, and the epithets lively and appropriated, especially the words, pale, unfelt, impaffive, incumbent, gathered.

3. There great Alcides, ftooping with his toil, Refts on his club, and holds th' Hefperian fpoil §.

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The reader may confult Thomfon's WINTER, V. 905.

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Ir were to be wifhed, that our author, whofe knowledge and taste of the fine arts were unquestionable, had taken more pains in defcribing fo famous a ftatue as that of the Farnefian Hercules, to which he plainly refers; for he has omitted the characteristical excellencies of this famous piece of Grecian workmanship, namely, the uncommon breadth of the shoulders, the knottynefs and fpaciousness of the * cheft, the firmness and protuberance of the mufcles in each limb, particularly the legs, and the majestic vastness of the whole figure, undoubtedly defigned by the artist to give a full idea of STRENGTH, as the Venus de Medicis of BEAUTY. These were the "invicti membra Glyconis," which, it is probable, Horace proverbially alluded to in his first epistle . The name of Glycon is to this day preserved on the base of the figure, as the maker of it; and as the virtuofi, customarily in fpeaking of a picture, or

*Luxuriatque toris animofum pectus.

+ Ver. 30.

Virg. Georg. lib. iii. ver, 81. ftatue,

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