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that IMITATE characters, manners, and fentiments. I may however remind fuch contemners of it, that, in a fifter-art, landscapepainting claims the very next rank to historypainting; being ever preferred to fingle portraits, to pieces of still-life, to droll figures, to fruit and flower-pieces; that Titian thought it no diminution of his genius, to spend much of his time in works of the former fpecies; and that, if their principles lead them to condemn Thomson, they must also condemn the Georgics of Virgil, and the greatest part of the noblest descriptive poem extant, I mean that of Lucretius.

We are next to speak of the LYRIC pieces of POPE. He used to declare, that if Dryden had finished a tranflation of the Iliad, he would not have attempted one after so great a master; he might have faid with more propriety, I will not write a mufic-ode after Alexander's Feast, which the variety and harmony of its numbers, and the beauty and force of its images, have confpired to place at the

head

head of modern lyric compofitions. This of Mr. POPE is, however, indifputably the second of the kind," propior tamen primo quam "tertio," to use an expreffion of Quintilian. The

*The inferiority of Addison's Ode, to POPE's on this fubject is manifeft and remarkable. What profaic tameness and infipidity do we meet with in the following lines?

Cecilia's name does all our numbers

grace, From every voice the tuneful accents fly,

In foaring trebles now it rises high,

And now it finks and dwells upon the base.

This almost defcends to burlefque. What follows is hardly rhyme, and furely not poetry:

Confecrate the place and day,

To mufic and Cecilia.

Mufic the greatest good that mortals know.

Mufic can noble hints impart.

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There follows in this ftanza, which is the third, a description of a subject very trite, Orpheus drawing the beafts about him. POPE fhewed his fuperiour judgment in taking no notice of this old story, and selecting a more new, as well as more striking incident, in the life of Orpheus. It was the cuftom of this time, for almost every rhymer to try his hand in an ode on St. Cecilia; we find many defpicable rhapfodies, fo called, in Tonfon's Mifcellanies. We have there alfo preferved another, and an earlier ode, of Dryden on this fubject. One stanza of which I cannot forbear inserting in this note. It was fet to mufic, 1687, by I. Baptista Draghi.

What paffion cannot music raise and quell!

When Jubal ftruck the chorded fhell,

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The first stanza is almost a perfect concert of itself; every different Inftrument is described and illuftrated, in numbers, that admirably represent, and correspond, to its different qualities and genius. The beginning of the fecond stanza, on the power which mufic exerts over the paffions, is a little flat, and by no means equal to the conclufion of that ftanza. The animating fong that Orpheus fung to the Argonauts, copied from Valerius Flaccus, for that of Apollonius is of a different nature, is the happily chosen subject of the third. On hearing which,

His lift'ning brethren ftood around,
And wondering on their faces fell,
To worship that celeftial found:

Less than a god they thought there could not dwell,
Within the hollow of that shell,

That spoke so sweetly and fo well.

What paffion cannot mufic raise and quell!

This is fo complete and engaging a hiftory-piece, that I knew a person of tafte who was refolved to have it executed, if an artift could have been found, on one fide of his falloon. In which cafe, faid he, the painter has nothing to do, but to substitute colours for words, the defign being finished to his hands. The reader doubtless obferves the fine effect of the repitition of the laft line; as well as the ftroke of nature, in making these rude hearers imagine fome god lay concealed in this first musician's inftrument.

Each

Each chief his fevenfold fhield difplay'd,

And half unfheath'd the shining blade;

Which effects of the fong, however lively, do not equal the force and fpirit of what Dryden afcribes to the fong of his Grecian artift; for when Timotheus cries out REVENGE, raises the furies, and calls up to Alexander's view a troop of Grecian ghosts that were flain and left unburied, inglorious and forgotten, each of them waving a torch in his hand, and pointing to the hoftile temples of the Perfians, and demanding vengeance of their prince, he instantly started from his throne,

Seiz'd a flambeau with zeal to destroy,

while Thais and the attendant princes rushed out with him, to fet fire to the city. The whole train of imagery in this stanza is alive, fublime, and animated to an unparallelled degree; the poet had so strongly possessed himself of the action defcribed, that he places it fully before the eyes of the reader.

grace

THE defcent of Orpheus into hell is fully introduced in the fourth ftanza, as it

naturally

naturally flowed from the fubject of the preceding one; the defcription of the infernal regions is well imagined, and the effects of the musician's lyre on the inhabitants of hell, are elegantly translated from the fourth Georgic of Virgil *, and happily adapted to the subject in question. The fupplicating song at the beginning of the fifth ftanza, is highly pathetic and poetical, efpecially when he conjures the powers below,

By the hero's armed shades

Glittering through the gloomy glades,
By the youths that dy'd for love

Wand'ring in the myrtle grove;

These images are picturefque and appropriated; and these are such notes as might,

Draw iron tears down Pluto's cheek, +
And make hell grant what love did seek.

But the numbers that conclude this ftanza aré of fo burlesque and ridiculous a kind, and have fo much the air of a drinking fong at a county

* Ver. 480.

+ Milton's Il Penferofo.

election,

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