ays made haste to rectify her mistakes, a few istances of her fallibility encouraged every one > appeal from her judgment to his own, and that f his companions, who are always ready to claour in the common cause, and elate each other ith reciprocal applause. competitors. Infamy flew round the hall, and scattered mildews from her wings, with which every one was stained; Reputation followed her with slower flight, and endeavoured to hide the blemishes with paint, which was immediately brushed away, or separated of itself, and left the stains more visible; nor were the spots of Infamy ever effaced, but with limpid water effused by the hand of Time from a well which sprung up beneath the throne of Truth. Hope was a steady friend to the disappointed, nd Impudence incited them to accept a second vitation, and lay their claim again before Paonage. They were again, for the most part, ent back with ignominy, but found hope not lienated, and Impudence more resolutely zealus; they therefore contrived new expedients, nd hoped at last to prevail by their multitudes, which were always increasing, and their perse-discouraged from attending; for not only Envy erance, which Hope and Impudence forbade hem to relax. Patronage having been long a stranger to the eavenly assemblies, began to degenerate tovards terrestrial nature, and forgot the precepts f Justice and Truth. Instead of confining her riendship to the Sciences, she suffered herself, by little and little, to contract an acquaintance with Pride the son of Falschood, by whose emraces she had two daughters, Flattery and Caprice. Flattery was nursed by Liberality, and Caprice by Fortune, without any assistance from the lessons of the Sciences. It frequently happened that Science, unwilling to lose the ancient prerogative of recommending to Patronage, would lead her followers into the Hall of Expectation; but they were soon and Suspicion incessantly tormented them, but Impudence considered them as intruders, and incited Infamy to blacken them. They therefore quickly retired, but seldom without some spots which they could scarcely wash away, and which showed that they had once waited in the Hall of Expectation. The rest continued to expect the happy moment, at which Caprice should beckon them to approach; and endeavoured to propitiate her, not with Homerical harmony, the representation of great actions, or the recital of noble sentiments, but with soft and voluptuous melody, intermingled with the praises of Patronage and Pride, by whom they were heard at once with pleasure and contempt. Patronage began openly to adopt the sentiments and imitate the manners of her husband, by whose opinions she now directed her decisions with very little heed to the precepts of Some were indeed admitted by Caprice, when Truth; and as her daughters continually gained they least expected it, and heaped by Patronage upon her affections, the Sciences lost their influ- with the gifts of Fortune; but they were from ence, till none found much reason to boast of that time chained to her footstool, and condemntheir reception, but those whom Caprice or Flat-ed to regulate their lives by her glances and her tery conducted to her throne. The throngs who had so long waited, and so Soften been dismissed for want of recommendation from the Sciences, were delighted to see the power of those rigorous goddesses tending to its extinction. Their patronesses now renewed their encouragements. Hope smiled at the approach of Caprice, and Impudence was always at hand to introduce her clients to Flattery. Patronage had now learned to procure herself reverence by ceremonies and formalities, and, instead of admitting her petitioners to an immediate audience, ordered the antechamber to be erected, called among mortals the Hall of Expectation. Into this hall the entrance was easy to those whom Impudence had consigned to Flattery, and it was therefore crowded with a promiscuous throng, assembled from every corner of the earth, pressing forward with the utmost eagerness of desire, and agitated with all the anxieties of competition. nods; they seemed proud of their manacles, and seldom complained of any drudgery however servile, or any affront however contemptuous; yet they were often, notwithstanding their obedi ence, seized on a sudden by Caprice, divested of their ornaments, and thrust back into the Hall of Expectation. Here they mingled again with the tumult, and all, except a few whom experience had taught to seek happiness in the regions of liberty, continued to spend hours, and days and years, courting the smile of Caprice by the arts of Flattery; till at length new crowds pressed in upon them, and drove them forth at different outlets into the habitations of Disease, and Shame, and Poverty, and Despair, where they passed the rest of their lives in narratives of promises and breaches of faith, of joys and sorrows, of hopes and disappointments. The Sciences, after a thousand indignities, retired from the palace of Patronage, and having They entered this general receptacle with ar- long wandered over the world in grief and disdour and alacrity, and made no doubt of speedy tress, were led at last to the cottage of Independ access, under the conduct of Flattery, to the pre-ence, the daughter of Fortitude; where they sence of Patronage. But it generally happened were taught by Prudence and Parsimony to supthat they were here left to their destiny, for the port themselves in dignity and quiet. inner doors were committed to Caprice, who opened and shut them, as it seemed, by chance, and rejected or admitted without any settled rule of distinction. In the mean time, the miserable attendants were left to wear out their lives in altenate exultation and dejection, delivered up to th e sport of Suspicion, who was always whisperginto their ear designs against them which were No. 92.] SATURDAY, FEB. 2, 1751. Jam nunc minaci murmure cornuum HOR. FRANCIS. Ever formed, and of Envy, who diligently point-Ir has been long observed, that the idea of beau out the good fortune of one or other of their ty is vague and undefined, different in different T minds, and diversified by time or place. It has been a term hitherto used to signify that which pleases us we know not why, and in our approbation of which we can justify ourselves only by the concurrence of numbers, without much power of enforcing our opinion upon others by any argument, but example and authority. It is, indeed, so little subject to the examinations of reason, that Paschal supposes it to end where demonstration begins, and maintains, that without incongruity and absurdity we cannot speak of geometrical beauty. To trace all the sources of that various pleasure which we ascribe to the agency of beauty, or to disentangle all the perceptions involved in its idea, would, perhaps, require a very great part of the life of Aristotle or Plato. It is, however, in many cases apparent that this quality is merely relative and comparative; that we pronounce things beautiful because they have something which we agree, for whatever reason, to call beauty, in a greater degree than we have been accustomed to find it in other things of the same kind; and that we transfer the epithet as our knowledge increases, and appropriate it to higher excellence, when higher excellence comes within our view. Much of the beauty of writing is of this kind, and therefore Boileau justly remarks, that the books which have stood the test of time, and been admired through all the changes which the mind of man has suffered from the various revolutions of knowledge, and the prevalence of contrary customs, have a better claim to our regard than any modern can boast, because the long continuance of their reputation proves that they are adequate to our faculties, and agreeable to nature. It is, however, the task of criticism to establish principles; to improve opinion into knowledge; and to distinguish those means of pleasing which depend upon known causes and rational deduction, from the nameless and inexplicable elegancies which appeal only to the fancy, from which we feel delight, but know not how they produce it, and which may well be termed the enchantress of the soul. Criticism reduces those regions of literature under the dominion of science, which have hitherto known only the anarchy of ignorance, the caprices of fancy, and the tyranny of prescription. There is nothing in the art of versifying so much exposed to the power of imagination as the accommodation of the sound to the sense, or the representation of particular images, by the flow of the verse in which they are expressed. Every student has innumerable passages, in which he, and perhaps he alone, discovers such resemblances; and since the attention of the present race of poetical readers seems particularly turned upon this species of elegance, I shall endeavour to examine how much these conformities have been observed by the poets, or directed by the critics, how far they can be established upon nature and reason, and on what occasions they have been practised by Milton. Homer, the father of all poetical beauty, has been particularly celebrated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as he that, of all the poets, exhibited the greatest variety of sound; " for there are, (says he,) innumerable passages, in which length of time, bulk of body, extremity of passion, and stillness of repose; or, in which, on the contrary, brevity, speed, and eagerness, are evidently marked out by the sound of the syllables. Thus the anguish and slow pace with which the blind Polypheme groped out with his hands the entrance of his cave, are perceived in the cadence of the verses which describe it. Κύκλωψ δὲ στενάχων τε καὶ ὠδίνων ὀδίνῃσι, Meantime the Cyclop raging with his wound, POPE. The critic then proceeds to show, that the ef forts of Achilles struggling in his armour against the current of a river, sometimes resisting, and sometimes yielding, may be perceived in the elisions of the syllables, the slow succession of the feet, and the strength of the consonants. Δεῖνον δ' ἀμφ' Αχιλήα κυκώμενον ἵστατο κύμα. So oft the surge, in watery mountains spread, Many other examples Dionysius produces; but these will sufficiently show, that either he was fanciful, or we have lost the genuine pronunciation; for I know not whether, in any one of these instances, such similitude can be discovered. It seems, indeed, probable, that the veneration with which Homer was read, produced many supposititious beauties; for though it is certain, that the sound of many of his verses very justly corresponds with the things expressed, yet, when the force of his imagination, which gave him full possession of every object, is considered, together with the flexibility of his language, of which the syllables might be often contracted or dilated at pleasure, it will seem unlikely that such conformity should happen less frequently even without design. It is not however to be doubted, that Virgil, who wrote amidst the light of criticism, and who owed so much of his success to art and labour, endeavoured among other excellences, to exhibit this similitude; nor has he been less happy in this than in the other graces of versification. This felicity of his numbers was, at the revival | When things are small, the terms should still be so ; of learning, displayed with great elegance by Vida, in his Art of Poetry. Haud satis est illis utcunque claudere versum.- Ecce aliquis subit egregio pulcherrimus ore, Cui lætum membris Venus omnibus afflat honorem. Ad scopulos, cumulo insequitur præruptus aquæ mons.— Adde moram, et pariter tecum quoque verba laborent In medio interrupta: quierunt cum freta ponti, "Tis not enough his verses to complete, In measure, numbers, or determined feet. To all, proportion'd terms he must dispense, And make the sound a pic. ure of the sense; The correspondent words exactly frame, The look, the features, and the mien the same. With rapid feet and wings, without delay, This swiftly flies, and smoothly skims away: This blooms with youth and beauty in his face, And Venus breathes on every limb a grace; That, of rude form, his uncouth members shows, Looks horrible, and frowns with his rough brows; His monstrous tail, in many a fold and wind, Voluminous and vast, curls up behind; At once the image and the lines appear Rude to the eye, and frightful to the ear. Lo! when the sailors steer the ponderous ships, And plough, with brazen beaks, the foamy deeps Incumbent on the main that roars around, Beneath their labouring oars the waves resound; The prows wide echoing through the dark profound To the loud call each distant rock replies; Toss'd by the storm the towering surges rise; While the hoarse ocean beats the sounding shore, Dash'd from the strand, the flying waters roar. Flash at the shock, and gathering in a heap, The liquid mountains rise, and overhang the deep. But when blue Neptune from his car surveys, And calms at one regard the raging seas, Stretch'd like a peaceful lake the deep subsides, And the pitch'd vessel o'er the surface glides. For low words please us, when the theme is low. But when some giant, horrible and grim, Enormous in his gait, and vast in every limb, Stalks towering on; the swelling words must rise In just proportion to the monster's size. If some large weight his huge arms strive to shove, Let the lines fly precipitate away, And when the viper issues from the brake, Be quick; with stones, and brands, and fire, attack When night descends, or stunn'd by numerous strokes, So oft we see the interrupted strain (His blood congeal'd, and every nerve unstrung) In full career to charge the warlike steed: PITT. From the Italian gardens Pope seems to have transplanted this flower, the growth of happier climates, into a soil less adapted to its nature, and less favourable to its increase. Soft is the strain, when Zephyr gently blows, From these lines, laboured with great attention, and celebrated by a rival wit, may be judg ed what can be expected from the most diligent endeavours after this imagery of sound. The verse intended to represent the whisper of the vernal breeze, must be confessed not much to excel in softness or volubility; and the smooth stream runs with a perpetual clash of jarring consonants. The noise and turbulence of the torrent is, indeed distinctly imaged, for it requires very little skill to make our language rough; but in these lines, which mention the effort of Ajax, there is no particular heaviness, obstruction, or delay. The swiftness of Camilla is rather contrasted than exemplified; why the verse should be lengthened to express speed, will not easily be discovered. In the dactyls used for that purpose by the ancients, two short syllables were pronounced with such rapidity, as to be equal only to one long; they, therefore, naturally exhibit the act of passing through a long space in a short time. But the Alexandrine, by its pause in the midst, is a tardy and stately measure; and the word unbending one of the most sluggish and slow which our language affords, cannot much accelerate its motion. These rules and these examples have taught, ticisin. Such performances, however, are not our present critics to inquire very studiously and wholly without their use; for they are commonly minutely into sounds and cadences. It is there- just echoes to the voice of fame, and transmit the fore useful to examine with what skill they have general suffrage of mankind when they have no proceeded; what discoveries they have made; particular motives to suppress it. and whether any rules can be established which may guide us hereafter in such researches. Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest. The bigotry with which editors regard the authors whom they illustrate or correct, has been generally remarked. Dryden was known to have written most of his critical dissertations only to recommend the work upon which he then happened to be employed: and Addison is suspected to have denied the expediency of poetical justice, because his own Cato was condemned to perish in a good cause. There are prejudices which authors, not other wise weak or corrupt, have indulged without scruple; and perhaps some of them are so complicated with our natural affections, that they cannot easily be disentangled from the heart. Scarce any can hear with impartiality a compari THERE are few books on which more time is spent by young students, than on treatises which deliver the characters of authors; nor any which oftener deceive the expectation of the reader, or fill his mind with more opinions which the progress of his studies and the increase of his know-son between the writers of his own and another ledge oblige him to resign. Baillet has introduced his collection of the decisions of the learned, by an enumeration of the prejudices which mislead the critic, and raise the passions in rebellion against the judgment. His catalogue, though large, is imperfect; and who can hope to complete it? The beauties of writing have been observed to be often such as cannot in the present state of human knowledge be evinced by evidence, or drawn out into demonstrations; they are therefore wholly subject to the imagination, and do not force their effects upon a mind pre-occupied by unfavourable sentiments, nor overcome the counter-action of a false principle or of stubborn partiality. To convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him against his will is justly pronounced by Dryden to be above the reach of human abilities. Interest and passion will hold out long against the closest siege of diagrams and syllogisms, but they are absolutely impregnable to imagery and sentiment; and will for ever bid defiance to the most powerful strains of Virgil or Homer, though they may give way in time to the batteries of Euclid or Archimedes. In trusting therefore to the sentence of a critic, we are in danger not only from that vanity which exalts writers too often to the dignity of teaching what they are yet to learn, from that negligence which sometimes steals upon the most vigilant caution, and that fallibility to which the condition of nature has subjected every human understanding; but from a thousand extrinsic and accidental causes, from every thing which can excite kindness or malevolence, veneration or contempt. Many of those who have determined with great boldness upon the various degrees of literary merit, may be justly suspected of having passed sentence, as Seneca remarks of Claudius, Una tantum parte audita, Sape et nulla, without much knowledge of the cause before them: for it will not easily be imagined of Langbane, Borrichitus, or Rapin, that they had very accurately perused all the books which they praise or censure; or that, even if nature and learning had qualified them for judges, they could read for ever with the attention necessary to just cri country: and though it cannot, I think, be charged equally on all nations, that they are blinded with this literary patriotism, yet there are none that do not look upon their authors with the fondness of affinity, and esteem them as well for the place of their birth, as for their knowledge or their wit. There is, therefore, seldom much respect due to comparative criticism, when the competitors are of different countries, unless the judge is of a nation equally indifferent to both. The Italians could not for a long time believe, that there was any learning beyond the mountains; and the French seem generally persuaded, that there are no wits or reasoners equal to their own. I can scarcely conceive that if Scaliger had not considered himself as allied to Virgil, by being born in the same country, he would have found his works so much superior to those of Homer, or have thought the controversy worthy of so much zeal, vehemence and acrimony. There is, indeed, one prejudice, and only one, by which it may be doubted whether it is any dis honour to be sometimes misguided. Criticism has so often given occasion to the envious and ill-natured, of gratifying their malignity, that some have thought it necessary to recommend the virtue of candour without restriction, and to preclude all future liberty of censure. Writers possessed with this opinion are continually enforcing civility and decency, recommending to critics the proper diffidence of themselves, and inculcating the veneration due to celebrated names. | I am not of opinion that these professed enemies of arrogance and severity have much more benevolence or modesty than the rest of mankind; or that they feel in their own hearts, any other intention than to distinguish themselves by their softness and delicacy. Some are modest because they are timorous, and some are lavish of praise because they hope to be repaid. There is, indeed, some tenderness due to liv ing writers, when they attack none of those truths which are of importance to the happiness of mankind, and have committed no other offence than that of betraying their own ignorance or dulness. I should think it cruelty to crush an insect who had provoked me only by buzzing in my ear; and would not willingly interrupt the dream of harm less stupidity, or destroy the jest which makes No. 94.] its author laugh. Yet I am far from thinking his measure with his subject, even without any this tenderness universally necessary, for he that effort of the understanding, or intervention of the writes may be considered as a kind of general judgment. To revolve jollity and mirth necessachallenger, whom every one has a right to at-rily tunes the voice of a poet to gay and sprightly tack; since he quits the common rank of life, notes, as it fires his eye with vivacity; and resteps forward beyond the lists, and offers his flection on gloomy situations and disastrous merit to the public judgment. To commence events, will sadden his numbers, as it will cloud But in such passages there is author is to claim praise, and no man can justly his countenance. only the similitude of pleasure to pleasure, and aspire to honour, but at the hazard of disgrace. But, whatever be decided concerning contem- of grief to grief, without any immediate applicaporaries, whom he that knows the treachery of tion to particular images. The same flow of the human heart, and considers how often we joyous versification will celebrate the jollity of gratify our own pride or envy, under the appear- marriage, and the exultation of triumph; and the ance of contending for elegance and propriety, same languor of melody will suit the complaints will find himself not much inclined to disturb; of an absent lover, as of a conquered king. It is scarcely to be doubted, that on many octhere can surely be no exemptions pleaded to secure them from criticism, who can no longer suf- casions we make the music which we imagine fer by reproach, and of whom nothing now re- ourselves to hear, that we modulate the poem by mains but their writings and their names. Upon our own disposition, and ascribe to the numbers these authors the critic is undoubtedly at full the effects of the sense. We may observe in life, liberty to exercise the strictest severity, since he that it is not easy to deliver a pleasant message endangers only his own fame; and like Æneas, in an unpleasing manner, and that we readily aswhen he drew his sword in the infernal regions, sociate beauty and deformity with those whom encounters phantoms which cannot be wounded. for any reason we love or hate. Yet it would be He may, indeed, pay some regard to established too daring to declare that all the celebrated reputation; but he can by that show of reverence adaptations of harmony are chimerical, that Homer had no extraordinary attention to the meconsult only his own security, for all other molody of his verse when he described a nuptial tives are now at an end. festivity; The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive; and the inte rest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatised, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority. It has, indeed, been advanced by Addison, as one of the characteristics of a true critic, that he points out beauties rather than faults. But it is rather natural to a man of learning and genius to apply himself chiefly to the study of writers who have more beauties than faults to be displayed: for the duty of criticism is neither to depreciate, nor dignify by partial representations, but,to hold out the light of reason, whatever it may discover; and to promulgate the determinations of truth, whatever she shall dictate. THE resemblance of poetic numbers to the subject which they mention or describe, may be considered as general or particular; as consisting in the flow and structure of a whole passage taken together, or as comprised in the sound of some emphatical and descriptive words, or in the cadence and harmony of single verses. The general resemblance of the sound to the sense is to be found in every language which admits of poetry, in every author whose force of fancy enables him to impress images strongly on his own mind, and whose choice and variety of language readily supplies him with just representations. To such a writer it is natural to change that Vida was merely fanciful, when he supposed Os, humerosque Deo similis: namque ipse vecoram The Trojan chief appear'd in open sight; Had form'd his curling locks, and made his temples shine, DRYDEN. or that Milton did not intend to exemplify the harmony which he mentions: yo Fountains! and that warble as ye flow, That Milton understood the force of sounds well adjusted, and knew the compass and variety of the ancient measures, cannot be doubted; since he was both a musician and a critic; but he seems to have considered these conformities of cadence as either not often attainable in our language, or as petty excellences unworthy of his ambition: for it will not be found that he has always assigned the same cast of numbers to the same objects. He has given in two passages very minute descriptions of angelic beauty; but though the images are nearly the same, the numhers will be found upon comparison very different: And now a strippling cherub he appears, |