Fair to no purpofe, artful to no end, Young without Lovers, old without a Friend; Alive, ridiculous, and dead, forgot! Ah! Friend! to dazzle let the Vain defign; 245 To raise the Thought, and touch the Heart, be thine! 250 That Charm fhall grow, while what fatigues the Ring, Flaunts and goes down, an unregarded thing: NOTES. Serene læta, non luxuriofa; plena, non tumida." And fometimes Tully; as," vicit pudorem libido, timorem audacia, rationem amentia." But these writers fall into this mode of speaking but feldom, and do make it their conftant and general manner. Thofe moderns, who have not acquired a true taste for the fimplicity of the best antients, have generally run into a frequent ufe of point, oppofition, and contraft. They who begin to ftudy painting, are ftruck at firft with the pieces of the moft vivid colouring; they are almost ashamed to own that they do not relish and feel the modeft and referved beauties of Raphael. The exact proportion of St. Peter's at Rome occafions it not to appear fo great as it really is. It is the fame in writing; but by degrees we find that Lucan, Martial, Juvenal, Q. Curtius, and Florus, and others of that stamp, who abound in figures that contribute to the false florid, in luxuriant metaphors, in pointed conceits, in lively antithefes, unexpectedly darting forth, are contemptible for the very causes which once excited our admiration. It is then we relish Terence, Cæfar, and Xenophon. VER. 249. Advice for their true Intereft. P. VER. 253. So when the Sun's] There are not perhaps, in the whole compass of the English language, four lines more exquifitely finished; not a fyllable can be altered for the better; every word I Serene in Virgin Modesty she shines, And unobserv'd the glaring Orb declines. Oh! bleft with Temper, whofe unclouded ray And yet, believe me, good as well as ill, 255 260 · 265 270 Heav'n, NOTES. word feems to be the only proper one that could have been used. So pure and pellucid is the style, "Ut pura nocturno renidet Luna mari!" VER. 268. Though China fall.] Addison has touched this fubject with his ufual exquifite humour, in the Lover, No. 10. p. 291. of his Works, 4to. quoting Epictetus to comfort a lady that labours under this heavy calamity. VER. 269. The picture of an estimable woman, with the best kind of contrarieties created out of the Poet's imagination: who therefore feigned those circumstances of a husband, a daughter, and love for a fifler, to prevent her being mistaken for any of his acquaintance. And having thus made his Woman, he did, as the antient Poets were wont, when they had made their Muse, invoke, and addrefs his poem to her. W. VER. 270. A Contradiction fill.] So alfo has he fhewn Man to be in the Effay. Heav'n, when it strives to polish all it can Its last best work, but forms a fofter Man; Blends, in exception to all gen'ral rules, 275 280 Be this a Woman's Fame: with this unbleft, Toasts live a scorn, and Queens may die a jest. This Phoebus promis'd (I forget the year) When those blue eyes firft open'd on the sphere; Afcendant Phoebus watch'd that hour with care, 285 Averted half your Parents' fimple Pray'r; And gave you Beauty, but deny'd the Pelf That buys your Sex a Tyrant o'er itself, The gen'rous God, who Wit and Gold refines, 290 Kept Drofs for Ducheffes, the world shall know it, To you gave Sense, Good-humour, and a Poet. NOTES. VER. 280. And produces-You.] The turn of thefe lines is exactly the fame with those of Mrs. Biddy Floyd; Swift's Miscellanies, vol. iv. p. 142. "Jove mix'd up all, and his beft clay employ'd, Then call'd the happy compofition-Floyd.” Mrs. Patty Blount was always, at first, supposed to be the lady here addreffed-" produces You." VER. 291. The world fhall know it,] This is an unmeaning expreffion, and a poor expletive, into which our Poet was unfortu nately forced by the rhyme. "Maudit "Maudit foit le premier, dont la verve infenfée, Voulut avec la rime enchaîner la raison.” Boileau, Sat. ii. v. 53. Rhyme also could alone be the occafion of the following faulty ex- “Nay half in Heav'n except what's mighty odd”. on fuch a world we fall". -"take scandal at a spark” "do the knack, and-do the feat" And more instances might be added, if it were not disagreeable to observe these straws in amber. But if rhyme occasions such inconveniencies and improprieties in fo exact a writer as our Author, what can be expected from inferior verfifiers? It is not my intention to enter into a trite and tedious difcuffion of the feveral merits of rhyme and blank verfe. Perhaps rhyme may be propereft for fhorter pieces; for lyric, elegiac, and fatiric poems; for pieces where closeness of expreffion and smartness of style are expected; but for subjects of a higher order, where any enthusiasm or emotion is to be expreffed, or for poems of a greater length, blank verfe is undoubtedly preferable. An epic poem in rhyme appears to be fuch a fort of thing as the Æneid would have been if it had been written, like Ovid's Fafti, in hexameter and pentameter verses; and the reading it would have been as tedious as the travelling through the one long, strait avenue of firs that leads from Mofcow to Petersburgh, I will give the reader Mr. Pope's own opi nion on this fubject, and in his own words, as delivered to Mr. Spence: "I have nothing to say for rhyme; but that I doubt if a poem can fupport itself without it in our language, unless it be ftiffened with such strange words as are likely to deftroy our language itself. The high ftyle that is affected fo much in blank Q4 verfe verse would not have been supported even in Milton, had not his subject turned so much on such strange and out-of-the-world things as it does." May we not, however, venture to observe, that more of that true harmony, which will beft fupport a poem, will refult from a variety of pauses, and from an intermixture of those different feet (iambic and trochaïc particularly) into which our language naturally falls, than from the uniformity of fimilar terminations. "There can be no mufic," fays Cowley, " with only one note.” See Mr. Webb's excellent Obfervations on Rhyme and Blank Verse, in his Beauties of Poetry. Dr. Adam Smith, as well as Fontenelle, thought that much of the pleasure we receive from the imitative arts arose from the difficulty of imitation. Voltaire also, in the preface to his Œdipus, talks of the pleasure arifing from the difficulté furmontée with respect to rhyme. But Smith, with whom I lived many years in a ftate of intimacy, was always a lover of French poetry, as was his friend David Hume. After all, we cannot subscribe to the authoritative decifion of a certain noted critic, "that our epic compofitions are found moft pleafing when clothed in rhyme: And that the generality of readers, if left to themselves, and were not prejudiced by their admiration of the Greek and Latin languages, would be more delighted with Milton, if, befides his various pause and measured quantity, he had enriched his numbers with rhyme." This may remind us of the opinion of another learned prelate, who fays, "that Paradife Loft was much admired, though the author affected to write it in blank verse.” Burnet's Hift. vol. i. |