so sublime a genius as Milton could sometimes fall into it, in such a work as an epic poem. But we must attribute it to his humouring the vicious taste of the age he lived in, and the false judgment of our unlearned English readers in general, who have few of them a relish of the more masculine and noble beauties of poetry. FAB. VI. Ovid seems particularly pleased with the subject of this story, but has notoriously fallen into a fault he is often taxed with, of not knowing when he has said enough, by his endeavouring to excel. How has he turned and twisted that one thought of Narcissus's being the person beloved, and the lover too? Cunctaque miratur quibus est mirabilis ipse. Dumque petit petitur, pariterque incendit et ardet. Uror amore mei flammas moveoque feroque, &c. But we cannot meet with a better instance of the extravagance and wantonness of Ovid's fancy, than in that particular circumstance at the end of the story of Narcissus's gazing on his face after death in the Stygian waters. The design was very bold, of making a boy fall in love with himself here on earth, but to torture him with the same passion after death, and not to let his ghost rest in quiet, was intolerably cruel and uncharitable. P. 155. 1. 19.-But whilst within, &c.] Dumque sitim sedare cupit sitis altera crevit. We have here a touch of that mixed wit I have before spoken of, but I think the measure of pun in it outweighs the true wit; for if we express the thought in other words, the turn is almost lost. This passage of Narcissus probably gave Milton the hint of applying it to Eve, though I think her surprise at the sight of her own face in the water, far more just and natural, than this of Narcissus. She was a raw unexperienced being, just created, and there fore might easily be subject to the delusion; but Narcissus had been in the world sixteen years, and was brother and son to the water-nymphs, and therefore to be supposed conversant with fountains long before this fatal mistake. P. 156. l. 17.—" You trees," says he, &c.] Ovid is very justly celebrated for the passionate speeches of his poem. They have generally abundance of nature in them, but I leave it to better judgment to consider whether they are not often too witty and too tedious. The poet never cares for smothering a good thought that comes in his way, and never thinks he can draw tears enough from his reader, by which means our grief is either diverted or spent before we come to his conclusion; for we cannot at the same time be delighted with the wit of the poet, and concerned for the person that speaks it; and a great critic has admirably well observed, Lamentationes debent esse breves et concisa, nam lachryma subitò excrescit, et difficile est auditorem vel lectorem in summo animi affectu diu tenere. Would any one in Narcissus's condition have cried out-Inopem me copia fecit? Or can any thing be more unnatural than to turn off from his sorrows for the sake of a pretty reflection? O utinam nostro secedere corpore possem ! Votum in amante novum; vellem, quod amamus, abesset. None, I suppose, can be much grieved for one that is so witty on his own afflictions. But I think we may every where observe in Ovid, that he employs his invention more than his judgment, and speaks all the ingenious things that can be said on the subject, rather than those which are particularly proper to the person and circumstances of the speaker. FAB. VII. P. 159. 1.7.-When Pentheus thus.] There is a great deal of spirit and fire in this speech of Pentheus, but I believe none besides Ovid would have thought of the transformation of the serpent's teeth for an incitement to the Thebans' courage, when he desires them not to degenerate from their great forefather the dragon, and draws a parallel between the behaviour of them both. Este, precor memores, quâ sitis stirpe creati, FAB. VIII. The story of Acœtes has abundance of nature in all the parts of it, as well in the description of his own parentage and employment, as in that of the sailors' characters and manners. But the short speeches scattered up and down in it, which make the Latin very natural, cannot appear so well in our language, which is much more stubborn and unpliant, and therefore are but as so many rubs in the story, that are still turning the narration out of its proper course. The transformation at the latter end is wonderfully beautiful. FAB. IX. Ovid has two very good similies on Pentheus, where he compares him to a river in a former story, and to a war-horse in the present. AN ESSAY ON VIRGIL'S GEORGICS. VIRGIL may be reckoned the first who introduced three new kinds of poetry among the Romans, which he copied after three the greatest masters of Greece. Theocritus and Homer have still disputed for the advantage over him in pastoral and heroics, but I think all are unanimous in giving him the precedence to Hesiod in his Georgics. The truth of it is, the sweetness and rusticity of a pastoral cannot be so well expressed in any other tongue as in the Greek, when rightly mixed and qualified with the Doric dialect; nor can the majesty of an heroic poem any where appear so well as in this language, which has a natural greatness in it, and can be often rendered more deep and sonorous by the pronunciation of the Ionians. But in the middle style, where the writers in both tongues are on a level, we see how far Virgil has excelled all who have written in the same way with him. There has been abundance of criticism spent on Virgil's Pastorals and Eneids, but the Georgics are a It is to be observed, that this agreeable essay was written so early as 1693, that is, when the author, at most, was but in his one-andtwentieth year; yet the style is so exact, that it wants but little of being absolutely faultless. One or two words have, indeed, lost the grace, and, in some degree, the sense which they had in the writer's days: and in one, or two expressions, there is some degree of inaccuracy.But I leave it to the reader, as an exercise of his taste, to discover these instances. subject which none of the critics have sufficiently taken into their consideration, most of them passing it over in silence, or casting it under the same head with pastoral; a division by no means proper, unless we suppose the style of a husbandman ought to be imitated in a Georgic, as that of a shepherd is in pastoral. But though the scene of both these poems lies in the same place; the speakers in them are of a quite different character, since the precepts of husbandry are not to be delivered with the simplicity of a plowman, but with the address of a poet. No rules, therefore, that relate to pastoral, can any way affect the Georgics, since they fall under that class of poetry, which consists in giving plain and direct instructions to the reader; whether they be moral duties, as those of Theognis and Pythagoras; or philosophical speculations, as those of Aratus and Lucretius; or rules of practice, as those of Hesiod and Virgil. Among these different kinds of subjects, that which the Georgics go upon, is I think the meanest and least improving, but the most pleasing and delightful. Precepts of morality, besides the natural corruption of our tempers, which makes us averse to them, are so abstracted from ideas of sense, that they seldom give an opportunity for those beautiful descriptions and images which are the spirit and life of poetry. Natural philosophy has indeed sensible objects to work upon, but then it often puzzles the reader with the intricacy of its notions, and perplexes him with the multitude of its disputes. But this kind of poetry I am now speaking of, addresses itself wholly to the imagination : it is altogether conversant among the fields and woods, and has the most delightful part of nature for its province. It raises in our minds a pleasing variety of scenes and landscapes, whilst it teaches us; and makes the dryest of its precepts look like a description. A Georgic, therefore, is some part of the science of husbandry put into a pleasing dress, and set off with all the beauties and embellishments of poetry. Now since this science of husbandry is of a very large extent, the poet shews |