fatyric or moral poetry, will never fucceed, with equal merit, in the higher branches of his art. In his ode on the taking Namur, are inftances of the * BOMBASTIC, of the PROSAIC, and of the PUERile. And it is no small confirmation of the ruling paffion of this author, that he could not conclude his ode, but with a severe stroke on his old antagonist Perrault, though the majesty of this fpecies of compofitions is so much injured, by descending to perfonal fatire. The name of Malberbe is refpectable, as he was the first reformer of the French poefy, and the first who gave his countrymen any idea of a legitimate ode, though his own pieces have hardly any thing but harmony to recommend them. The Odes of la Motte, are fuller of delicate

An inftance of the FIRST, is to be found in the third ftanza. Of the SECOND, in the ninth stanza,

Qui domta Lille, Coutrai,

Gand, la fuperbe Espagnole,

Saint Omer, Bezançon, Dole,

Ypres, Maftricht, et Cambrai.

Of the THIRD fort, is, his making a ftar or comet, fatal to his enemies, of the white feather, which the king ufually wore in his hat.

fentiment, and philofophical reflection, than of imagery, figures, and poetry. There are particular ftanzas eminently good, but not one entire ode. Some of Rouffeau, particularly that to Fortune, and fome of his pfalms; and one or two of Voltaire, particularly, to the king of Pruffia, on his acccffion to the throne, and on Meaupertuis's travels to the north, to measure the degrees of the meridian towards the equator, feem to arise above that correct mediocrity, which diftinguishes the lyric poetry of the French. In this ode of Voltaire, we find a profopopeia of Americus, and afterwards a fpeech of Newton, on the defign of this traveller and his companions, that approach to the fublime,

Comme ils parloient ainfi, Newtons dan l'empirée,
Newton les regardoit, et du ciel entr'ouvert
Confirmez, difoit il, a la terre eclairée

Ce que j'ai decouvert.

I hope I shall not tranfgrefs a very fenfible observation of POPE, who would have a true critic be

Still pleas'd to praise, yet not afraid to blame,

if I should fay, we have lately seen two or three lyric pieces, fuperiour to any he has left us ; I mean an Ode on Lyric Poetry, and another to Lord Huntingdon, by Dr. Akenfide; and a Chorus of British Bards, by Mr. Gilbert West, at the end of the Institution of the Order of the Garter. Both these are written with regular returns of the Strophe, Antiftrophe, and Epode, which give a truly Pindaric variety to the numbers, that is wanting not only to the best French and Italian, but even to the best Latin odes. In the pieces here commended, the figures are ftrong, and the tranfitions bold, and there is a just mixture of fentiment and imagery; and particularly, they are animated with a noble spirit of liberty. I must refer the reader to the characters of Alcæus and of Milton in the two first, and to the ftanza of Mr. Weft's ode, on the barons procuring magna charta, which I shall infert at length.

On yonder plain,

Along whofe willow-fringed fide

The filver-footed Naids, fpotive train,

Down the smooth Thames amid the cygnets glide,

I faw, when at thy reconciling word,
Injuftice, anarchy, inteftine jarr,
Defpotic infolence, the wafting sword,

And all the brazen throats of civil war

Were hush'd in peace; from his imperious throne
Hurl'd furious down,

Abafh'd, difmay'd,

Like a chas'd lion to the favage shade
Of his own forefts fell Oppreffion fled,
With vengeance brooding in his fullen breast.
Then Justice fearless rais'd her decent head,
Heal'd every grief, each wrong redreft;
While round her valiant fquadrons ftood,
And bade her awful tongue demand,
From vanquifh'd John's reluctant hand,

The DEED OF FREEDOM purchas'd with their blood *.

THE next LYRIC compofitions of Pope, are two choruses inferted in a very heavy tragedy altered from Shakespear by the Duke of Buckingham; in which we fee, that the most accurate obfervation of dramatic rules without genius is of no effect. These choruses are extremely elegant and harmonious; but are they not chargeable with the fault, which

* Dodfley's Miscellanies, vol. ii. pag. 152. See also in the fame volume, an excellent ode of Mr. Cobb.

Aristotle

cr

Aristotle imputes to many of Euripides, that they are foreign and adventitious to the fubject, and contribute nothing towards the advancement of the main action? Whereas the chorus ought, Μοριον είναι το όλο, και συν αγωνίζεσθαι *, to be a part or member of the one Whole, cooperate with it, and help to accelerate the intended event; as is constantly, adds the philofopher, the practice of Sophocles. Whereas these reflections of POPE on the baneful influences of war, on the arts and learning, and on the univerfal power of love, feem to be too general, are not fufficiently appropriated, do not rise from the subject and occafion, and might be inferted with equal propriety in twenty other tragedies. This remark of Aristotle, though he does not himself produce any examples, may be verified from the following, among many others. In the Phoenicians of Euripides, they fing a long and very beautiful, but ill placed, hymn to Mars; I fpeak of that which begins fo nobly,