caldron, have a near refemblance with thefe of Horace, but he has added others well calculated to impress the deepest terror, from his own imagination. Canidia having placed the victim in a pit where he was gradually to be ftarved to death, begins to fpeak in the following awful and striking manner. O Rebus meis Non infideles arbitræ, Nox, & Diana, quæ filentium regis, Arcana cum fiunt facra! Nunc, nunc adefte! nunc in hoftiles domos But the fuddenly ftops, furprized to see the incantation fail. Quid accidit?--cur dira barbaræ minus ftances of horror. The babe, whofe finger is used in the enchantment, must be ftrangled in its birth, the grease must not only be human, but muft have dropped from a gibbet, the gibbet of a murderer; and even the fow, whofe blood is used, muft have offended nature by devouring her own farrow. Johnson's Obfervations on Mackbeth. At IV. Scene 1. In a few lines more, fhe difcovers the reason that her charms are inefficacious. Ah, ah folutus ambulat veneficæ, &c. She refolves therefore to double them, Majus parabo: majus infundam tibi And concludes with this spirited threat. Quam non amore fic meo flagres, uti The • Sanadon has a remark in the true fpirit of a faftidious French critic. "These descriptions of witchcraft muft have been very pleafing to ancient poets, fince they dwell upon them fo largely and frequently. But furely fuch objects have fo much horror in them, that they cannot be prefented with too much hafte and rapidity to the imagination."-Such falfe delicacy and refinement have rendered fome of the French incapable of relishing many of the forcible and mafculine images with which the ancients ftrengthened their compofitions. The most natural strokes in a poem that most abounds with them, the Odyffey, is to fuch judges a fund of ridicule. They must needs naufeate the scenes that lie in Eumeus's cottage, and defpife the coarfe ideas of fo ill-bred a princess as Nauficaa. Much less can such effeminate judges bear the bold and fevere ftrokes, the terrible graces, of our irregular Shakefpear, efpecially in his fcenes of magic and VOL. II. H incantations The boy, on hearing his fate thus cruelly des termined, no longer endeavours to fue for mercy, but breaks out into those bitter and natural execrations, mixed with a tender mention of his parents, which reach to the end of the ode. If we confider how naturally the fear of the boy. is expreffed in the firft fpeech, and how incantations. Thefe gothic charms are in truth more striking to the imagination than the claffical. The magicians of Ariofto, Taffo, and Spencer, have more powerful fpells, than thofe of Apollonius, Seneca, and Lucan. The inchanted foreft of Ifmeno is more awfully and tremendously poetical than even the Grove, which Cæfar orders to be cut down, in Lucan, 1. iii. 400, which was fo full of terrors, that at noonday or midnight, the Prieft himfelf dared not approach it, Dreading the Dæmon of the Grove to meet! Who, that fees the fable plumes waving on the prodigious helmet, in the castle of Otranto, and the gigantic arm on the top of the great ftaircafe, is not more affected than with the paintings of Ovid and Apuleius? What a group of dreadful images do we meet with in the Edda? The Runic poetry abounds in them. 'Tis remarkable, that the idea of the Fatal Sifters weaving the Danish ftandard, bears a marvellous refemblance to a paffage in Sophocles, Ajax, v. 1053. "Did not Erinnys herself make this fword? and Pluto, that dreadful workman, this belt ?” the the dreadful character of Canidia is supported in the second, and the various turns of paffion with which she is agitated; and if we add to these the concluding imprecations: we must own that this ode affords a noble specimen of the dramatic powers of Horace. 17. Here in a fhrine that cast a dazling light, Sate fix'd in thought, the mighty Stagyrite; Ir may not be unpleafing to observe the artful manner with which Addifon has introduced each of his worthies at the Tables of Fame, and how nicely he has adapted the behaviour of each perfon to his character. Addison had great fkill in the use of delicate and oblique allufions. "It was expected that Plato would have taken a place next his master Socrates; but on a fudden there was heard a great clamour of difputants at the door, who appeared with Ariftotle at the head of them. That philofopher with fome rudenefs, but great strength of reason, convinced the whole table that a fifth place at the table was his due, and took it accordingly." Thus in another paffage." Julius Cæfar was now coming forward; and though most of the hiftorians offered their fervice to introduce him, he left them at the door, and would have no conductor but himself."-In the fame fpirit he tells us; That Q. Curtius intended to conduct Alexander the Great, to an apartment appointed for the reception of fabulous heroes; that Virgil hung back at the entrance of the door, and would have excused himself, had not his modefty been overcome by the invitation of all who fate at the table; that Lucan entered at the head of many historians with Pompey, and that feeing Homer and Virgil at the table, was going to fit down himself, had not the latter whispered him, he had forfeited his claim to it, by coming in as one of the hiftorians. 18. With equal rays immortal TULLY fhone, The Roman roftra deck'd the Conful's throne: Tatler, No. 81, at fup. Gath'ring |