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high opinion of its beauties, and who conveyed it to Addison. POPE had ornamented the poem with the machinery of guardian angels, which he afterwards omitted. fpeaks of his work with a diffidence uncommon in a young poet, and which does him credit *. "No errors, fays he to Steele, are fo trivial, but they deserve to be mended. I could point to you feveral, but it is my bufinefs to be informed of those faults I do not know; and as for those I do, not to talk of them, but mend them.-I am afraid of nothing fo much as to impofe any thing upon the world which is unworthy its acceptance.".

It would have been matter of curiofity to have known Addifon's fentiments of this vifion. His own is introduced and carried on with that vein of propriety and poetry, for which this fpecies of his writings is so justly celebrated, and which contribute to place him at the head of allegorical writers, fcarce excepting Plato himself.

* Vol. VII. Letters, 8vo. p. 248.
† See Tatler, No. 81, referred to above.

SECT.

SECT. VIII.

Of JANUARY and MAY, The Wife of BATH, and TRANSLATIONS of STATIUS and OVID.

T

HE firft dawnings of polite literature

in Italy, appeared in tale-writing and fables. Boccaccio gave a currency and vogue to this fpecies of compofition. He collected many of the common tales of his country, and delivered them in the pureft ftile, enlivened with interesting circumftances. Sacchetti published tales before him, in which are many anecdotes of Dante and his cotemporaries. Boccacio was faintly imitated by feveral Italians, Poggio, Bandello, Cinthio, Firenzuola, Malespini, and others. *Machiavel himself did honour to this fpecies of writing, by his Belphegor.

* Machiavel, who poffeffed the livelieft wit with the pro foundest reflection, wrote alfo two comedies, Mandgragora and Clytia, the former of which was played before Leo X. with much magnificence; the latter is an imitation of the

Caffina

To produce, and carry on with probability and decorum, a feries of events, is difficult work of invention; and if we w minutely to examine the popular ftories of every nation, we fhould be amazed to find how few circumftances have been ever invented. Facts and events have been indeed varied and modified, but totally new ones have not been created. The writers of the old romances, from whom Ariofto and Spencer have borrowed fo largely, are fuppofed to have had copious imaginations: but may they not be indebted, for their invulnerable heroes, their monsters, their enchantments, their gardens of pleasure, their winged steeds, and the like, to the Echidna, to the Circe, to the Medea, to the Achilles, to the Syrens, to the Harpies, to the Phryxus, and the Bellerophon

Caffina of Plautus; " Indigna vero homine Chriftiano (fays Balzac) qui fanctiores Mufas colit, et, in ludicris quoque, meminiffe debet feveritatis." Epift. Select. pag. 202. I have been informed that Machiavel towards the latter part of his life grew religious, and that fome pieces of afcetic devotion, composed by him, are preferved in the libraries of Italy. Lord Bacon fays remarkably of Machiavel, that he teaches, quid homines facere foleant, non quid debeant.

Vol. II,

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of the ancients? The cave of Polypheme might furnish out the ideas of their giants, and Andromeda might give occafion for stories of distressed damfels on the point of being devoured by dragons, and delivered at fuch a critical season by their favourite knights. Some faint traditions of the ancients might have been kept glimmering and alive during the whole barbarous ages, as they are called; and it is not impoffible, but these have been the parents of the Genii in the eastern, and the Fairies in the western world. To say that Amadis and Sir Tristan have a claffical foundation, may at firft fight appear paradoxical; but if the subject were examined to the bottom, I am inclined to think, that the wildest chimeras in those books of chivalry with which Don Quixote's library was furnished, would be found to have a close connexion with ancient mythology.

WE of this nation have been remarkably barren in our inventions of facts; we have been chiefly borrowers in this fpecies of compofition;

pofition; as the plots of our moft applauded plays, both in tragedy and comedy, may witness, which have generally been taken from the novels of the Italians and Spaniards.

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THE ftory of JANUARY and MAY now before us, is of the comic kind, and the character of a fond old dotard betrayed into difgrace by an unfuitable match, is fupported in a lively manner. POPE has endeavoured, fuitably to familiarize the ftatelinefs of our heroic measure, in this ludicrous narrative but after all his pains, this measure is not adapted to such subjects, fo well as the lines of four feet, or the French numbers of Fontaine*. Fontaine is, in truth, the capital and unrivalled writer of comic tales. generally took his fubjects from Boccaccio, † Poggius, and Ariofto; but adorned them

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* It is to be lamented that Fontaine has fo frequently transgreffed the bounds of modefty. Boileau did not look upon Fontaine as an original writer, and ufed to fay he had borrowed both his ftile and matter from Marot and Rabelais.

+"Poggius Florentinus in hoc numero eloquentium virorum fingulare nomen obtinet. Scripfit de nobilitate, de avaritia, K 2

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