election, that one is amazed and concerned to find them in a serious ode, and in an ode of a writer eminently skilled, in general, in accommodating his founds to his fentiments. Thus fong could prevail O'er death and o'er hell, A conqueft how hard and how glorious! Yet mufic and love were victorious. One would imagine that John Dennis, or fomé hero of the Dunciad, had been here attempting to travesty this description of the restoration of Eurydice to life. It is obfervable, that this is the very measure, Addison thought was proper to use in the comic character of Sir Trufty; by the introduction of which he has so strangely debased and degraded his opera of Rosamond. How unhappy is he That is ty'd to a fhe, And fam'd for his wit and his beauty; For of us pretty fellows, Our wives are so jealous, They ne'er have enough of our duty. * * A& I. Scene II. Grideline and Trufty. See alfo, Scene IV. A&t I. A song of These These numbers therefore, according to Addifon's ear, conveyed a low and ludicrous idea, instead of being expreffive of triumph and exaltation, the images here intended to be impreffed by Pope. VIRGIL is again imitated throughout the fixth ftanza, which defcribes the behaviour of Orpheus on the second loss of Eurydice. I wish POPE had inferted that striking circumstance, so strongly imagined, of a certain melancholy murmur, or rather difmal fhriek, that was heard all around the lakes of Avernus, the moment Orpheus looked back on his wife; Terque fragor ftagnis auditus Avernis *. And as profopopeias are a great beauty in lyric poetry, furely he should not have omitted those natural and pathetic exclamations of Eurydice, the moment she was snatched back, and which she uttered as she was gradually finking to the shades, especially where she movingly takes her laft adieu, And adds, that fhe is now furrounded with a vast darkness, "feror ingenti circumdata "nocte," and in vain ftretching out her feeble arms towards him, Invalidafque tibi tendens, heu! non tua, palmas This lively and pathetic attitude would have made a ftriking picture under the hands of POPE. The reader, I prefume, feels the effect of the judicious placing in the verse, heu! non tua, and of its repetition after tibi. The places in which Orpheus, according to POPE, made his lamentations, are not so wild, fo favage and difmal, as those mentioned by Virgil; to introduce him " befide the falls of "fountains," conveys not such an image of defolation and despair, as the caverns on the banks of Strymon and Tanais, the Hyperborean defarts, and the Riphæan folitudes. And to fay of Hebrus, only, that it "rolls "in meanders," is flat and frigid, and does not heighten the melancholy of the place. There is an antithefis in the fucceeding lines, * Ver. 498. "he glows amid Rhodope's fnows,” which I hope the poet did not intend, as it would be a trivial and puerile conceit. The death of Orpheus is expreffed with a beautiful brevity and abruptness, suitable to the nature of the ode; Hark! Hamus refounds with the Bacchanals cries, Yet ev❜n in death Eurydice he fung. Instead of fung, Virgil fays vocabat, which is more natural and tender; and Virgil adds a very moving epithet, that he called miferam Eurydicen. I am fenfible PoOPE never intended an exact translation of the paffages of the Georgics here alledged; I only hint, that, in my humble judgment, he has omitted fome of the most striking incidents in the story. I have lately seen a manufcript ode, entitled, "On the Ufe and Abuse of Poetry," in which Orpheus is confidered in another, and a higher light, according to ancient mythology, as the first legiflator and civilizer of mankind. I fhall here infert a ftanza of it, containing part of what relates to this fubject. ANTISTROPHE II. He drew the naked, gazing men, Or where in turf-built fheds, or rufhy bowers, Or funk in heapy fnows ; Then fudden, while his melting mufic ftole Father of peace and arts! he first the city built; He fix'd the roving youths in Hymen's myrtle bands; And all the charities that soften'd man: The babes that in their fathers faces fmil'd, I am not permitted to transcribe any more, and therefore return to POPE again. THE beginning of the last stanza of the ode here examined, seems to be a repetition of the fubject I 2 |