all the changes which the mind of man has suffered from the various revolutions of knowledge and the prevalence of contrary customs, have a better claim to our regard than any modern can boast, because the long continuance of their reputation proves that they are adequate to our faculties, and agreeable to nature. It is, however, the task of criticism to establish principles; to improve opinion into knowledge; and to distinguish those means of pleasing which depend upon known causes and rational deduction, from the nameless and inexplicable elegances which appeal wholly to the fancy, from which we feel delight, but know not how they produce it, and which may well be termed the enchantresses of the soul. Criticism reduces those regions of literature under the dominion of science, which have hitherto known only the anarchy of ignorance, the caprices of fancy, and the tyranny of prescription. There is nothing in the art of versifying so much exposed to the power of imagination as the accommodation of the sound to the sense; or the representation of particular images, by the flow of the verse in which they are expressed. Every student has innumerable passages, in which he, and perhaps he alone, discovers such resemblances; and since the attention of the present race of poetical readers seems particularly turned upon this species of elegance, I shall endeavour to examine how much these conformities have been observed by the poets or directed by the critics, how far they can be established upon nature and reason, and on what occasions they have been practised by Milton. Homer, the father of all poetical beauty, has been particularly celebrated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as he that, of all the poets, exhibited the greatest variety of sound: For there are' says he, innumerable passages, in which length of time, bulk of body, extre'mity of passion, and stillness of repose; or, in which, on the contrary, brevity, speed, and eagerness, are 'evidently marked out by the sound of the syllables. 'Thus the anguish and slow pace with which the blind 'Polypheme groped out with his hands the entrance ' of his cave, are perceived in the cadence of the verses ' which describe it:' Κύκλωψ δὲ ςενάχων τε και ὠδίνων ὀδύνησι, Meantime the Cyclop raging with his wound, Spreads his wide arms, and searches round and round. POPE. The critic then proceeds to shew that the efforts of Achilles struggling in his armour against the current of a river, sometimes resisting, and sometimes yielding, may be perceived in the elisions of the syllables, the slow succession of the feet, and the strength of the consonants: Δεινον δ' αμφ' Αχιλῆα κυκώμενον ἵςατο κύμα. So oft the surge, in watʼry mountains spread, Wash'd from beneath him, slides the slimy soil. POPE. When Homer describes the crush of men dashed against a rock, he collects the most unpleasing and harsh sounds: Σὺν δέ δύω μάρψας, ώτε σκύλακας ποτὶ γαιη Snatch'd two, unhappy! of my martial band, POPE. And when he would place before the eyes something dreadful and astonishing, he makes choice of the strongest vowels, and the letters of most difficult utterance: Τῆ δ ̓ ἐπι μὲν Γοργὼ βλοσυρῶσις ἐςεφανωλο Tremendous Gorgan frown'd upon its field, POPE. Many other examples Dyonysius produces; but these will sufficiently show, that either he was fanciful, or we have lost the genuine pronunciation; for I know not whether, in any one of these instances, such similitude can be discovered. It seems indeed probable, that the veneration with which Homer was read, produced many suppositious beauties; for though it is certain that the sound of many of his verses very justly corresponds with the things expressed, yet when the force of his imagination, which gave him full possession of every object, is considered, together with the flexibility of his language, of which the syllables might be often contracted or dilated at pleasure, it will seem unlikely that such conformity should happen less frequently even without design. It is not, however, to be doubted that Virgil, who wrote amidst the light of criticism, and who owed so much of his success to art and labour, endeavoured, among other excellencies, to exhibit this similitude; nor has he been less happy in this than in the other graces of versification. This felicity of his numbers was, at the revival of learning, displayed with great elegance by Vida, in his Art of Poetry: Haud satis est illis utcunque claudere versum.... Nam diversa opus est veluti dare versibus cra.... Hic melior motaque pedum, et pernicibus alis, Ecce aliquis subit egregrio pulcherrimus ore, Ergo ubi jam nautæ spumas salis ære ruentes In medio interrupta; quierunt cum freta ponti, Evertisse domos, præfractaque quadrupedantum If some large weight his huge arms strive to shove, |