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LETTER FROM ITALY,

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

CHARLES LORD HALIFAX.

IN THE YEAR MDCCI.

Addison wrote this letter, "justly considered as the most elegant, if not the most sublime, of his poetical productions," while travelling in Italy. Bishop Hurd tells us that Pope used to speak very favourably of it; and himself, sparing as he is of praise, allows that the subject, so inviting to a classical traveller like Addison, seems to have raised his fancy, and brightened his expressions.

Dr. Johnson says, "the letter from Italy has been always praised, but has never been praised beyond its merit. It is more correct with less appearance of labour, and more elegant with less appearance of ornament, than any other of his poems." WORKS, Vol. vii. p. 452.

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LETTER FROM ITALY,

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

CHARLES LORD HALIFAX.

IN THE YEAR MDCCI.

Salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus,
Magna virûm! tibi res antiquæ laudis et artis
Ingredior, sanctos ausus recludere fontes.

VIRG. Georg. 2.

WHILE you, my lord, the rural shades admire,
And from Britannia's public posts retire,
Nor longer, her ungrateful sons to please,
For her advantage sacrifice your ease;
Me into foreign realms my fate conveys,
Through nations fruitful of immortal lays,
Where the soft season and inviting clime
Conspire to trouble your repose with rhyme:

For wheresoe'er I turn my ravish'd eyes,
Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise,
Poetic fields encompass me around,
And still I seem to tread on classic ground';

1 Malone states that this was the first time the phrase classic ground, since so common, was ever used. It was ridiculed by some contemporaries as very quaint and affected.

For here the muse so oft her harp has strung,
That not a mountain rears its head unsung;
Renown'd in verse each shady thicket grows,
And ev'ry stream in heavenly numbers flows.

How am I pleas'd to search the hills and woods
For rising springs and celebrated floods!
To view the Nar, tumultuous in his course,
And trace the smooth Clitumnus to his source,
To see the Mincio draw his wat'ry store
Through the long windings of a fruitful shore,
And hoary Albula's infected tide
O'er the warm bed of smoking sulphur glide.
Fir'd with a thousand raptures I survey
Eridanus through flow'ry meadows stray,
The king of floods! that rolling o'er the plains
The tow'ring Alps of half their moisture drains,
And proudly swoln with a whole winter's snows,
Distributes wealth and plenty where he flows.

Sometimes, misguided by the tuneful throng,
I look for streams immortaliz'd in song.
That lost in silence and oblivion lie,

(Dumb are their fountains and their channels dry),
Yet run for ever by the muse's skill,
And in the smooth description murmur still.
Sometimes to gentle Tiber I retire,

And the fam'd river's empty shores admire,
That destitute of strength derives its course
From thrifty urns and an unfruitful source;
Yet sung so often in poetic lays,

With scorn the Danube and the Nile surveys;
So high the deathless muse exalts her theme!
Such was the Boyne, a poor inglorious stream,