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have been vindicated, from their inferiority to the Greeks, in tragic poesy.

THE EPISTLE before us is tranflated by POPE, with faithfulness and with elegance; and much excells any that Dryden translated in the volume he published: many of which were done by fome "of the mob of gentlemen that wrote with ease;" that is, Sir C. Scroop, Caryl, Pooly, Wright, Tate, Buckingham, Cooper, and other careless rhymers. A good tranflation of these epiftles, is as much wanted, as one of Juvenal; for, out of fixteen fatires of that poet, Dryden himself tranflated but fix. We can now boast of happy tranflations in verfe, of almost all the great poets of antiquity; whilft the French have been poorly contented with only profe tranflations of Homer and Horace, which, fays Cervantes, can no more resemble the original, than the wrong fide of tapestry can represent the right. The inability of the French tongue to express many Greek or Roman ideas with facility and grace, is here vifible: but the Italians have Horace tranflated by Pallavacini,

The

Theocritus by Ricolotti and Salvini, Ovid by Anguillara, the Æneid, admirably well, in blank verse, by Annibal Caro, and the Georgics in blank verfe alfo, by Daniello.

I return to Ovid, by obferving, that he has put into the mouth of his heroine a greater number of pretty panegyrical epigrams, than of those tender and paffionate sentiments, which fuited her character, and made her SENSIBILITY in amours fo famous. What can be more elegantly gallant than this compliment to Phaon?

Sume fidem & pharetram; fies manifeftus Apollo;
Accedant capiti cornua; Bacchus eris.

This thought feems indisputably to have been imitated, in that moft justly celebrated of modern epigrams:

Lumine Acon dextro, capta eft Leonilla finiftro,
Et potis eft forma vincere uterque Deos;
Blande puer, lumen quod habes, concede forori,
Sic tu cocus AMOR, fic erit illa VENUS.

My

My chief reafon for quoting these delicate lines, was to point out the occafion of them, which feems not to be fufficiently known. They were made on Louis de Maguiron, the moft beautiful man of his time, and the great favourite of Henry III. of France, who loft an eye at the fiege of Iffoire; and on the Princess of Eboli, a great beauty, but who was deprived of the fight of one of her eyes, and who was at the fame time mistress of Philip II. King of Spain.

It was happily imagined to write an epistle in the character of Sappho, who had spoken of the joys of love with more warmth and feeling, than any writer of antiquity; and who described the violent symptoms attending this paffion, in so strong and lively a manner, that the physician Erafiftratus is said to have difcovered the secret malady of the Prince Antiochus, who was in love with his motherin-law Stratonice, merely by examining the symptoms of his patient's diftemper by this description. Addison has inferted in two of

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his Spectators *, an elegant character of this poetefs; and has given a translation of two of her fragments, that are exquifite in their kind: a translation, which we may presume Addison himself revised, and altered, for his friend Philips. As these two pieces are pretty wellknown, by being found in fo popular a book as the Spectator, I shall say no more of them; but shall add two more of her fragments, which, though very fhort, are yet highly beautiful and tender. The first represents the languor and listlesffness of a perfon deeply in love; we may fuppofe the fair author looking up earnestly on her mother, cafting down the web on which he was employed, and fuddenly exclaiming ;

Γλυκεια μαλις, ου τοι

Δύναμαι κρέκειν τον 15ον,
Ποθω δαμεισα παιδος,

Βραδιναν δι' Αφροδίταν 4.

Dulcis mater! non

Poffum texere telum

+ Inter novem illuftr. fœmin. fragmenta. Edit. a Fulvio Ur

fino, Antwerp.

N°. 223-229.

Amore

Amore victa pueri,

Per acrem Venerem.

The other fragment is of the defcriptive kind; and seems to be the beginning of an Ode addreffed to EVENING: it is quoted by Demetrius, Phalereus *,

Έσπερε παλια φερεις,

Φερεις οινον, φερεις αιγα,
Φερείς μαλερι παιδα.

Vefper omnia fers;

Fers vinum, fers capram,
Fers matri filiam.

From these little fragments, the first of which is an example of the pathetic, and the second of the picturesque, the manner of Sappho might have been gathered, if the two longer odes had not been preserved in the treatises of Dionyfius, and of Longinus. I cannot help adopting the application Addison has made of his two lines of Phaedrus, to these remains of our poetefs; which is perhaps one of the most elegant, and happy applications that ever was made from any claffic;

*Edit. Oxon. p. 104.,
O02

O fuavia

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