Page images
PDF
EPUB

Jones and Palladio to themfelves restore,

And be whate'er Vitruvius was before:

Till Kings call forth th' Ideas of your mind,
(Proud to accomplish what fuch hands defign’d)
Bid Harbours open, public Ways extend,
Bid Temples, worthier of the God, afcend;

195

NOTES.

Bid

ftrictly deserved; who inherited all that love of science and useful knowledge for which his family has been fo famous. The name of Boyle is indeed aufpicious to literature. That fublime genius and good man, Bishop Berkley, owed his preferment chiefly to this accomplished peer: For it was he that recommended him to the Duke of Grafton, in the year 1721, who took him over with him to Ireland when he was Lord Lieutenant, and promoted him to the deanery of Derry in the year 1724. Berkley gained the patronage and friendship of Lord Burlington, not only by his true politenefs, and the peculiar charms of his converfation, which was exquifite, but by his profound and perfect skill in architecture; an art which he had very particularly and accurately ftudied in Italy, when he went and continued abroad four years with Mr. Ashe, fon of the Bishop of Clogher. With an insatiable and philosophic attention, Berkley furveyed and examined every object of curiofity. He not only made the usual tour, but went over Apulia and Calabria, and even travelled on foot through Sicily, and drew up an account of that very claffical ground; which was loft in a voyage to Naples, and cannot be fufficiently regretted. His generous project for erecting an univerfity at Bermudas, the effort of a mind truly active, benevolent, and patriotic, is fufficiently known.

VER. 193. Jones] See an accurate and judicious account of his Works in Walpole's Anecdotes, vol. ii. from page 261 to page 280. full of curious particulars. Dr. Clarke, of All Souls College, Oxford, had Jones's Palladio, with his own notes and obfervations in Italian, which the Doctor bequeathed to Worcester College.

VER. 195, 197, &c. Till Kings-Bid Harbours open, &c.] The Poet, after having touched upon the proper objects of Magnifi

cence

Bid the broad Arch the dang'rous Flood contain,
The mole projected break the roaring Main;

NOTES.

200

Back

cence and Expence, in the private works of great men, comes to thofe great and public works which become a prince. This Poem was published in the year 1732, when fome of the new-built churches, by the act of Queen Anne, were ready to fall, being founded in boggy land, (which is fatirically alluded to in our Author's imitation of Horace, Lib. ii. Sat. 2.

"Shall half the new-built Churches round thee fall).” Others were vilely executed, through fraudulent cabals between undertakers, officers, &c. Dagenham-breach had done very great mischiefs; many of the Highways throughout England were hardly paffable; and most of those which were repaired by Turnpikes were made jobs for private lucre, and infamously executed, even to the entrance of London itself. The propofal of building a Bridge at Westminster had been petitioned against and rejected; but in two years after the publication of this poem, an Act for building a Bridge paffed through both Houses. After many debates in the committee, the execution was left to the carpenter above mentioned, who would have made it a wooden one; to which our Author alludes in these lines,

"Who builds a Bridge that never drove a pile?

Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile."

See the notes on that place.

P.

VER. 197. Bid Harbours open,] No country has been enriched and adorned, within a period of thirty or forty years, with fo many works of public fpirit, as Great Britain has been; witness our many extenfive roads, our inland navigations, (fome of which excel the boafted canal of Languedoc,) the lighting, and the paving, and beautifying our cities, and our various and magnificent edifices. A general good taste has been diffused in gardening, planting, and building. The ruins of Palmyra, the antiquities of Athens and Spalatro, and the Ionian antiquities, by Wood, Stuart, Adam, and Chandler, are fuch magnificent monuments of learned curiofity as no country in Europe can equal. Let it be remembered, that these fine lines of Pope were written when we had no Wyatt or Brown, Brindley or Reynolds; no Westminster

Bridge,

Back to his bounds their fubject Sea command,
And roll obedient Rivers through the Land:
These Honours, Peace to happy BRITAIN brings,
These are Imperial Works, and worthy Kings.

NOTES.

Bridge, no Pantheon, no Royal Academy, no king that is at once a judge and a patron of all those fine arts, which ought to be employed in raising and beautifying a palace equal to his dignity and his taste.

On the whole, this Epiftle contains rather ftrictures on the false tafte, than illustrations of the true; which circumstance gave room to Mr. Mason to treat the subject in a more open and ornamental manner, and with more picturefque and poetical imagery his English Garden.

VER. 203. Thefe Honours, Peace] One of the chief fources of the great riches of this country was the long Peace which was enjoyed during the ministry of Sir Robert Walpole; who, however he may have been cenfured, deserved high praise on this account.

SEE

EPISTLE V.

TO MR. ADDISON.

Occafioned by his Dialogues on MEDALS.

EE the wild Waste of all-devouring years! How Rome her own fad Sepulchre appears! With nodding arches, broken temples spread! The very Tombs now vanifh'd like their dead!

NOTES.

Imperial

THIS was originally written in the year 1715, when Mr. Addifon intended to publish his book of Medals; it was fome time before he was Secretary of State; but not published till Mr. Tickel's Edition of his works: at which time the verses on Mr. Craggs, which conclude the poem, were added, viz. in 1720. P.

VER. 1. See the wild Wafle] This treatise on Medals was writren by Addison in that pleasing form of compofition, fo unsuccessfully attempted by many modern authors, Dialogues. In no one fpecies of writing have the antients fo indifputable a fuperiority over us. The dialogues of Plato and Cicero, especially the former, are perfect dramas; where the characters are supported with confiftency and nature, and the reafoning fuited to the characters.

"There are in English three dialogues, and but three,” says a learned and ingenious author, who has himself practised this agreeable way of writing, "that deferve commendation, namely, the Moralifts in Lord Shaftesbury, Mr. Addison's Treatife on Medals, and the Minute Philofophy of Bishop Berkley." Alciphron did, indeed, well deferve to be mentioned on this occafion; notwithstanding it has been treated with contempt by writers much inferior to Berkley in learning, genius, and taste. Omitting those paffages in the fourth dialogue, where he has intro

duced

5

Imperial wonders rais'd on Nations spoil'd,
Where mix'd with Slaves the groaning Martyr toil'd:

NOTES.

Huge

duced his fanciful and whimsical opinions about vifion, an attentive reader will find that there is scarce a fingle argument that can be urged in defence of Revelation, but what is here placed in the clearest light, and in the most beautiful diction: In this work there is a happy union of reasoning and imagination. The two different characters of the two different forts of free-thinkers, the fenfual and the refined, are strongly contrafted with each other, and with the plainnefs and fimplicity of Euphranor.

Thefe dialogues of Addison are written with that sweetness and purity of style which conftitute him one of the first of our prosewriters. The Pleasures of Imagination, the Effay on the Georgics, and his laft papers in the Spectator and Guardian, are models of language. And fome late writers, who seem to have miftaken stiffness for strength, and are grown popular by a pompous rotundity of phrase, make one wish that the rifing generation may abandon this unnatural, false, inflated, and florid style, and form themselves on the chafter model of Addifon. The chief imperfection of his Treatife on Medals, is, the perfons introduced as speakers, in direct contradiction to the practice of the antients, are fictitious not real; for Cynthio*, Philander, Palæmon, Eugenio, and Theocles, cannot equally excite and engage the attention of the reader, with Socrates and Alcibiades, Atticus and Brutus, Cowley and Spratt, Maynard and Somers. It is fomewhat fingular, that fo many of the modern dialogue-writers should have failed in this particular, when fo many of the most celebrated wits of modern Italy had given them eminent examples of the contrary proceeding, and closely following the steps of the antients, constantly introduced living and real perfons in their numerous compofitions of this fort; in which they were so fond of delivering their fentiments, both on moral and critical subjects; witness the Il Cortegiano of B. Caftiglione, the Afolani of P. Bembo, Dialoghi

* How ill the forms, and ceremonies, and compliments of modern good-breeding would bear to be exactly represented; fee Characteristics, vol. i. p. 209.

del

« PreviousContinue »