firft regular modern tragedy, in blank verse, his Sophonif ba; as Ruccellai himself produced the second that was seen in Italy, entituled, Rofmunda.

Before I conclude these reflections, it will, I prefume, be expected that I speak a few words on the didactic. poets of our own nation.

PHILIPS's Cyder is a very close and happy imitation of the Georgic, and conveys to us the fulleft idea of Virgil's manner: whom he hath exactly followed in a pregnant brevity of ftyle, in throwing in frequent moral reflections, in varying the method of giving his precepts, in his digreffions, and in his happy addrefs in returning again to his subject; in his knowledge and love of philosophy, medicine, agriculture and antiquity, and in a certain primaeval fimplicity of manners, which is so confpicuous in both.

If there be any fault in Philips, it is, perhaps, his infertion of many images that excite laughter, and are contrary to the majesty of the didactic Muse; and his having used too many elifions, exotique and antique expreffions, and tranfpofitions, under the notion of strengthening his verse, and of resembling Milton; who, by the way, is not fo uniformly obfolete and difficult in his diction, as is fometimes imagined; but makes use of these uncommon and unfamiliar phrafes chiefly when he is defcribing things. that lie out of the compass of nature, and that are marvellous and strange, fuch as hell, chaos, and heaven.

SOMERVILLE in his CHACE, writes with all the spirit and fire of an eager sportsman.

Farewell, Cleora! here deep funk in down
Slumber fecure with happy dreams amus'd——
Me other joys invite,

The horn fonorous calls, the pack awak'd
Their mattins chant, nor brook my long delay.
My courfer hears their voice; fee there with ears.

And

And tail erect, neighing he paws the ground;
Fierce rapture kindles in his red'ning eyes,
And boils in every vein.—-

B. й. 84.

The defcriptions of hunting the hare, the fox, and the ftag, are extremely spirited, and place the very objects before our eyes; of fuch confequence is it for a man to write on that which he hath frequently felt with pleafure. He neglects his, verfification fometimes, and there are doubtless great inequalities, both with refpect to harmony and expreffion, in the poem. He hath failed in describing the madness that fometimes fages among hounds, and particularly in his account of the effects of the bite of a mad dog on a man.

To defcribe fo difficult a thing, gracefully and poetically, as the effects of a diftemper on the human body, was referved for Dr. ARMSTRONG; who accordingly hath nobly executed it, at the end of the third book of his Art of preserving health, where he hath given us that pathetic account of the sweating-fick nefs. There is a claffical correctnefs and clofenefs of ftyle in this poem, that are truly admirable, and the fubject is raifed and adorned by numberlefs poetical images. What can be more pleasing than his description of a healthy fituation for a house?

See! where enthron'd in adamantine state,
Proud of her bards imperial Windsor fits;
There choose thy feat, in some aspiring grove
Faft by the flowly-winding Thames; or where
Broader the laves fair Richmond's green retreats;
(Richmond that fees an hundred villas rife
Rural or gay). O from the fummer's rage
O wrap me in the friendly gloom that hides
Umbrageous Ham.

This ends with a well-conducted profopopoeia.

Green

Green rife the Kentish hills in chearful air;
But on the marshy plains that Effex spreads
Build not, nor reft too long thy wand'ring feet.
For on a ruftic throne of dewy turf,

With baneful fogs her aching temples bound,
Quartana there prefides; a meagre fiend
Begot by Eurus, when his brutal force
Comprefs'd the flothful Naiads of the fens.

B. i. 108.

In how lofty a manner hath he introduced his precepts concerning drinking water!

Now come, ye Naiads, to the fountains lead!
Now let me wander through your gelid reign;
I turn to view th' enthusiastic wilds

By mortal elf untrod. I hear the din

Of waters thundering o'er the ruin'd cliffs.
With holy reverence I approach the rocks
Whence glide the streams renown'd in ancient fong.
Hence from the defart down the rumbling steep
First springs the Nile; here burfts the founding Po
In angry waves; Euphrates hence devolves

A mighty flood to water half the Eaft;

And there in Gothic folitude reclin'd

t;

The chearless Tanais pours his hoary urn.
What folemn twilight! what stupendous fhades
Enwrap these infant floods! Thro' every nerve
A facred horror thrills; a pleafing fear

Glides o'er my frame!

B. ii. 352, &c.

In fhort, this author hath evidently fhewn, that there is no fubject but what is capable of being exalted into poetry by a genius.

There is a fublimity of fentiment, an energy of diction,

* See particularly Ep. i. ver. 267 to the end. If there be any fault in this poem, it is perhaps the mixing droll and

burlesque

diction, a spirit unextinguished by correctness and rhyme, to be found in Mr. POPE's Effay on Man, that will ever render it the honour of our nation and language. And it is not my province at present to determine, what some are apt to difpute, Whether or no this poem (in the words of Dr. Warburton) " hath a precifion, force, and "clofenefs of connection, rarely to be met with ever "in the most formal treatises of philofophy?"

The PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION are, in their very nature, a most proper and pregnant fubject for a didactic poem. The amiable author who happily fixt on thefe as his fubject, it must be allowed by the feverest critic, hath done them ample juftice; whether we confider his glowing and animated ftyle, his lively and picturefque images; the graceful and harmonious flow of his numbers; or the noble spirit of poetical enthusiasm, which breathes through his whole work. But that I may not lose myself in a wide field of panegyric, I will produce the following three paffages, in which images of Greatness, Wonderfulness, and Beauty (from the perception of which all the pleasures of poetry and the imagination principally flow) are thus nobly exemplify'd.

1. GREATNESS.

The high-born foul

Difdains to reft his heav'n afpiring wing
Beneath its native quarry. Tir'd of earth
And this diurnal fcene, fhe springs aloft
Through fields of air; purfues the flying ftorm;

burlesque images with ferious doctrines: fuch is that line (taken from Charron, Book 1. on Wisdom)

"See man for mine, replies a pamper'd goofe."

+ See particularly the defcription of PLEASURE, Virtue, and PAIN, Book ii. 409, &c. of a folemn wood, and particu larly ver. 290. B. iii. and of a poet at the time of his firft conceiving fome great defign, B. iii. ver. 373

Rides on the volley'd lightning thro' the heav'ns;
Or yok'd with whirlwinds and the northern blaft,
Sweeps the long tract of day. Then high fhe foars
The blue profound, and hov'ring o'er the fun
Beholds him pouring the redundant stream
Of light; beholds his unrelenting sway
Bend the reluctant planets and abfolve
The fated rounds of time. Thence far effus'd
She darts her swiftness up the long career
Of devious comets; through its burning figns
Exulting circles the perennial wheel

Of nature, and looks back on all the ftars,
Whofe blended light, as with a milky zone,
Invests the orient. Now amaz'd she views
Th' empyreal wafte, where happy spirits hold,
Beyond this concave heav'n, their calm abode.
And fields of radiance, whose unfading light
Has travell'd the profound fix thousand years,
Nor
yet arrives in fight of mortal things;
Ev'n on the barriers of the world untir'd
She meditates th' eternal depth below;
Till, half recoiling, down the headlong fteep
She plunges; foon o'erwhelm'd and swallow'd up
In that immenfe of being. There her hopes
Reft at the fated goal.

2. WONDERFULNESS.

What need words

To paint its power? For this, the daring youth
Breaks from his weeping mother's anxious arms,
In foreign climes to rove: the pensive fage
Heedlefs of fleep, or midnight's harmful damp,
Hangs o'er the fickly taper; and untir'd
The virgin follows, with inchanted step,
The mazes of fome wild and wond'rous tale

VOL. I.

F f

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