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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.

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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,
Χεσρὶ ψηλοφρων......

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.
Ωθει δ ̓ ἐν σάκεὶ πίπλων βο· εδὲ πόδεσσιν
Έσκε ςηρίξασθαι........

So oft the surge, in watʼry mountains spread,
Beats on his back, or bursts upon his head;
Yet dauntless still the adverse flood he braves,
And still indignant bounds above the waves.
Tir'd by the tides, his knees relax with toil;

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
Κότσι· ἐκ δ ̓ ἑγκέφαλος χαμάδις ῥέε δεῦε δὲ γαῖαν.
........ His bloody hand

Snatch'd two, unhappy! of my martial band,
And dash'd like dogs against the stony floor;
The pavement swims with brains and mingled gore.

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
Δεινόν δερκομήιη· περι δὲ Δεὶμα τε φόβ α τε.

Tremendous Gorgan frown'd upon its field,
And circling terrors fill'd th' expressive shield.

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....
Omnia sed numeris vocum concordibus aptant,
Atque sono quæcunque canunt imitantur, et apta
Verborum facie, et quæsito carminis ore,

Nam diversa opus est veluti dare versibus cra....

Hic melior motaque pedum, et pernicibus alis,
Molle viam tacito lapsu per levia radit;
Ille autem membris, ac mole ignavius ingens
Incedit tardo molimine subsidendo.

Ecce aliquis subit egregrio pulcherrimus ore,
Cui lætum membris Venus omnibus afflat honorem.
Contra alius rudis, informes ostendit et artus,
Hirsutumque supercilium, ac caudam sinuosam,
Ingratus visu, sonitu, illætabilis ipso....

Ergo ubi jam nautæ spumas salis ære ruentes
Incubuere mari, videas spumare reductis
Convulsum remis, rostrisque stridentibus æquor.
Tunc longe sale saxa sonant, tunc et freta ventis
Incipiunt agitata tumescere; littore fluctus
Illidunt rauco, atque refracta remurmurat unda
Ad scopulos, cumulo insequitur præruptus aquæ mons....
Cum vero ex alto speculatus cærulea Nereus
Leniit in morem stagni, placidæque paludis,
Labitur uncta vadis abies, natat uncta carina....
Verba etiam res exiguas angusta sequuntur,
Ingentesque juvant ingentia; cuncta gigantem
Vasta decent, vultus immanes, pectora lata.
Et magni membrorum artus, magna ossa lacertique.
Atque adeo, siquid geritur molimine magno,
Adde moram, et pariter tecum quoque verba laborem
Segnia; seu quando vi multa gleba coactis
Eternum frangenda bidentibus, æquore seu cum
Cornua velatarum obvertimus antennarum.
At mora si fuerit damno, properare jubebo.
Si se forte cava extulerit mala vipera terra,
Tolle moras, cape saxa manu, cape robora, pastor;
Ferte citi flammas, date tela, repelite pestem.
Ipse etiam versus ruat, in præcepsque feratur,
Immenso cum præcipitans ruit Oceano nox,
Aut cum perculsus graviter procumbit humi bos,
Cumque etiam requies rebus datur, ipsa quoque ultro
Carmina paulisper cursu cessare videbis

In medio interrupta; quierunt cum freta ponti,
Postquam auræ posuere, quiescere protinus ipsum
Cernere erit, mediisque mcaptis sistere versum.
Quid dicam, senior cum telum inibelle sine ictu
Invalidus jacit, et defectis viribus æger?
Num quoque tum versus segni pariter pede languet;
Sanguis hebet, frigent effoetæ in corpore vires
Fortem autem juvenem deceat prorumpere in arces,

Evertisse domos, præfractaque quadrupedantum
Pectora pectoribus perrumpere, sternere turres
Ingentes, totoque, ferum dare funera campo.
"Tis not enough his verses to complete,
In measure, number, or determin'd feet.
To all, proportion'd terms he must dispense,
And make the sound a picture of the sense;
The correspondent words exactly frame;
The look, the features, and the mien the same.
With rapid feet and wings, without delay,
This swiftly flies, and smoothly skims away;
This blooms with youth and beauty in his face,
And Venus breathes on ev'ry limb a grace;
That, of rude form, his uncouth members shows,
Looks horrible, and frowns with his rough brows;
His monstrous tail in many a fold and wind,
Voluminous and vast, curls up behind;
At once the image and the lines appear,
Rude to the eye, and frightful to the ear.
Lo! when the sailors steer the pond'rous ships,
And plough, with brazen beaks, the foamy deeps,
Incumbent on the main that roars around,
Beneath the lab'ring oars the waves resound;
The prows wide echoing thro the dark profound.
To the loud call each distant rock replies;
Tost by the storm the tow'ring surges rise;
While the hoarse ocean beats the sounding shore,
Dash'd from the strand, the flying waters roar.
Flash at the shock, and gath'ring in a heap,
The liquid mountains rise, and overhang the deep.
But when blue Neptune from his car surveys,
And calms at one regard the raging seas,
Stretch'd like a peaceful lake the deep subsides,
And the pitch'd vessel o'er the surface glides.
When things are small, the terms should still be so ;
For low words please us when the theme is low.
But when some giant, horrible and grim,
Enormous in his gait, and vast in ev'ry limb,
Stalks tow'ring on, the swelling words must rise
In just proportion to the monster's size.

If some large weight his huge arms strive to shove,
The verse too labours; the throng'd words scarce move.
When each stiff clod beneath the pond'rous plough
Crumbles and breaks, th' incumber'd lines must flow.
Nor less, when pilots catch the friendly gales,

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