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I cannot at present recollect any folitude fo romantic, or peopled with beings fo proper to the place, and the fpectator. The mind naturally loves to lose itself in one of these wildernesses, and to forget the hurry, the noise, and splendor of more polished life.

6. But on the South, a long majestic race

Of Ægypt's priests the gilded niches grace *.

I WISH POPE had enlarged on the rites and ceremonies of these Ægyptian priests, a subject finely fuited to defcriptive poetry. Milton has touched fome of them finely, in an ode not fufficiently attended to.

Nor is Ofiris feen

In Memphian grove or green,

Trampling the unfhower'd grafs with lowings loud:

Nor can he be at reft

Within his facred cheft,

Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud;
In vain with timbrel'd anthems dark,

The fable-stoled forcerers bear his worship'd ark t.

* Ver. 109.

+ Milton's Poems, Vol. II. Pag. 30. Newton's Edit. Oct.

7. High

7. High on his car Sefoftris ftruck my view,
Whom fceptred flaves in golden harness drew,
His hands a bow and pointed jav'lin hold;
His giant arms are arm'd in fcales of gold *.

THIS Coloffal ftatue of the celebrated Eaftern tyrant is ftrongly imagined. As Phidias is faid to have received his ideas of majesty in his famous Jupiter, from a paffage in Homer, fo, it is not impoffible but our author's imagination was inflamed and enlarged by Milton's picture of Satan. It is well known, that the Ægyptians, in all their productions of art, mistook the gigantic for the fublime, and greatness of bulk for greatness of

manner.

8. Of Gothic ftructure was the Northern fide,

O'erwrought with ornaments of barb'rous pride †.

"THOSE Who have confidered the theory of Architecture, tell us the proportions of the three Grecian orders, were taken from the Human Body, as the most

fect production of nature.

* Ver. 113.

D 2

beautiful and perHence were de

+ Ver. 119.

rived

rived those graceful ideas of columns, which had a character of ftrength without clumfinefs, and of delicacy without weakness. Those beautiful proportions were, I fay, taken originally from nature, which, in her creatures, as hath been already observed, referreth to fome ufe, end or defign. The Gonfiezza also, or swelling, and the diminution of a pillar, is it not in fuch proportion as to make it appear ftrong and light at the fame time? In the fame manner, must not the whole entablature, with its projections, be fo proportioned, as to feem great, but not heavy ; light, but not little; inafmuch as a deviation into either extreme, would thwart that reafon and use of things, wherein their beauty is founded, and to which it is fubordinate? The entablature and all its parts and ornaments, architrave, freeze, cornice, triglyphs, metopes, modiglions, and the reft, have each an use, or appearance of use, in giving firmness and union to the building, in protecting it from the weather, in cafting off the rain, in representing the ends of the beams with their intervals,

intervals, the production of the rafters, and fo forth. And if we confider the graceful angles in frontifpieces, the spaces between the columns, or the ornaments of the capitals, shall we not find that their beauty ariseth from the appearance of use, or the imitation of natural things, whofe beauty is originally founded on the fame principle? Which is indeed, the grand distinction between Grecian and Gothic architecture, the latter being fantaftical and for the most part founded neither in nature nor reafon, in neceffity nor ufe, the appearance of which, accounts for all the beauties, graces, and ornaments of the

other. *"

9. There fat Zamolxis with erected Eyes,

And Odin here in mimic trances dies.
There on rude iron columns, fmear'd with blood,
The horrid forms of Scythian heroes stood,
Druids and bards (their once loud harps unftrung)
And youths that died to be by poets fung t.

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE, always a pleasing, though not a folid writer, relates the follow

ALCIPHRON, Vol. I. Dial. III.

+ Ver. 123

ing

ing anecdote.

"In difcourfe upon this

fubject, and confirmation of this opinion, having been general among the Goths of those countries, count Oxenftiern the Swedish embaffador, told me, there was still in Sweden, a place which was a memorial of it, and was called Odin's hall: that it was a great bay in the fea, encompaffed on three fides with steep and ragged rocks; and that in the time of the Gothic paganism, men that were either fick of diseases they esteemed mortal or incurable, or elfe grown invalid with age, and thereby past all military action, and fearing to die meanly and bafely, as they esteemed it, in their beds, they ufually caused themfelves to be brought to the nearest part of these rocks, and from thence threw themfelves down into the fea, hoping by the boldnefs of fuch a violent death, to renew the pretence of admiffion into the hall of Odin, which they had loft by failing to die in combat, and by arms *."

* Temple's Works, Vol. III. pag. 238.

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