of its two fhepherds are well fupported, and happily contrasted: and the laft has expreffively painted the changeful refolutions, the wild wishes, the paffionate and abrupt exclamations, of a disappointed and despairing lover. UPON the whole, the principal merit of the PASTORALS of POPE confists, in their correct and mufical verfification; mufical, to a degree of which rhyme could hardly be thought capable: and in giving the first specimen of that harmony in English verse, which is now become indifpenfably neceffary; and which has fo forcibly and univerfally influenced the public ear, as to have rendered every moderate rhymer melodious. POPE lengthened the abruptnefs of Waller, and at the fame time contracted the exuberance of Dryden. I REMEMBER to have been informed, by an intimate friend of POPE, that he had once laid a defign of writing AMERICAN ECLOGUES: ECLOGUES: The fubject would have been fruitful of the most poetical imagery; and, if properly executed, would have rescued the author from the accufation here urged, of having written Eclogues without invention. OUR author, who had received an early tincture of religion, a reverence for which he preferved to the laft, was with justice convinced, that the fcriptures of God contained not only the pureft precepts of morality, but the most elevated and fublime strokes of genuine poefy; ftrokes, as much superior to any thing Heathenifm can produce, as is Jehovah to Jupiter. This is the cafe more particularly in the exalted prophefy of Isaiah, which POPE has fo fuccefsfully verfified in an Eclogue, that inconteftably furpaffes the Pollio of Virgil: although perhaps the dignity, the energy, and the fimplicity of the original are in a few paffages weakened and diminished by florid epithets, and useless circumlocutions. See nature haftes her earliest wreaths to bring, With all the incenfe of the breathing fpring *. are lines, which have too much prettiness, and too modern an air. The judicious addition of circumstances and adjuncts is what renders poefy a more lively imitation of nature than profe. POPE has been happy in introducing the following circumftance: the prophet fays, "The parched ground shall "become a pool;" Our author expreffes this idea by faying, that the fhepherd, fball START amid the thirsty wild to hear New falls of water murmuring in his ear †. A ftriking example of a fimilar beauty may be added from Thompson. Melisander, in the Tragedy of AGAMEMNON, after telling us he was conveyed in a veffel, at mid-night, to the wildeft of the Cyclades, adds, when the pitiless mariners had left him in that dreadful folitude, On the other hand, the prophet has been fometimes particular, when POPE has been only general. << Lift up thine eyes round "about, and fee; all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: The "multitude of CAMELS fhall cover thee: See, barbarous nations at thy gates attend, *Ifaiah, c. lx. v. 4, 6, 7, + Ver. 91. As As profperity and happiness are defcribed in this Eclogue by a combination of the most pleafing and agreeable objects, so misery and deftruction are as forcibly delineated in the fame Ifaiah, by the circumftances of diftrefs and defolation, that were to attend the fall of that magnificent city, Babylon: and the latter is perhaps a more proper and interesting fubject for poetry than the former; as fuch kinds of objects make the deepest impreffion on the mind: terror being a stronger senfation than joy. Accordingly, a noble ode on the deftruction of Babylon, taken from the fourteenth chapter of Ifaiah, has been written by Dr. Lowth; whofe latin prelections on the inimitable poefy of the Hebrews, abounding in remarks entirely new, delivered in the pureft and most expreffive language, are the richest augmentation literature has lately received; and from which the following paffage, gradually unfolding the fingular beauties of this prophecy, is here closely, though faintly, tranflated, and inferted as a pattern of just criticism. THE |