those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been requisite in a prose writer. They are some of them uncommon, but such as the reader must assent to, when he sees them explained with that ease and perspicuity in which they are delivered. As for those which are the most known and the most received, they are placed in so beautiful a light, and illustrated with such apt allusions, that they have in them all the graces of novelty; and make the reader, who was before acquainted with them, still more convinced of their truth and solidity. And here give me leave to mention what Monsieur Boileau has so well enlarged upon in the preface to his works: That wit and fine writing doth not consist so much in advancing things that are new, as in giving things that are known an agreeable turn. It is impossible for us who live in the latter ages of the world, to make observations in criticism, morality, or in any art or science, which have not been touched upon by others; we have little else left us, but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights. If a reader examines Horace's Art of Poetry, he will find but few precepts in it which he may not meet with in Aristotle, and which were not commonly known by all the poets of the Augustan age. His way of expressing and applying them, not his invention of them, is what we are chiefly to admire. 66 Longinus, in his reflections, has given us the same kind of sublime, which he observes in the several passages that occasioned them: I cannot but take notice that our English author has after the same manner exemplified several of the precepts in the very precepts themselves." He then produces some instances of particular beauty in the numbers, and concludes with saying, that "there are three poems in our tongue of the same nature, and each a master-piece in its kind: The Essay on Translated Verse; the Essay on the Art of Poetry; and the Essay on Criticism." Of Windsor Forest, positive is the judgment of the affirmative MR. JOHN DENNIS. "That it is a wretched rhapsody, impudently writ in emulation of the Cooper's Hill of Sir John Denham: The author of it is obscure, is ambiguous, is affected, is temerarious, is barbarous." But the author of the Dispensary, DR. GARTH, in the preface to his poem of Claremont,† differs from this opinion; "Those who have seen these two excellent poems of Cooper's Hill, and Windsor Forest, the one written by Sir John Denham, the other by Mr. Pope, will shew a great deal of candour if they approve of this." *Letter to B. B. at the end of the Remarks on Pope's Homer, 1717. P. Of the Epistle of Eloisa, we are told by the obscure writer of a poem called Sawney," That because Prior's Henry and Emma charmed the finest tastes, our author writ his Eloise in opposition to it; but forgot innocence and virtue: if you take away her tender thoughts and her fierce desires, all the rest is of no value." In which, methinks, his judgment resembles that of a French taylor on a villa and gardens by the Thames : " All this is very fine, but take away the river, and it is good for nothing." 66 But very contrary hereunto was the opinion of MR. PRIOR himself, saying in his Alma,* "O Abelard! ill-fated youth, Dan Pope, for thy misfortune griev'd, * Alma, Cant. ii. P. † Prior's is a beautiful, delicate, and poetical compliment. Pope never returned it in kind, or by the least notice, I believe, on any Bowles. occasion. Pope has noticed Prior several times, amongst his nearest friends, particularly in the Dunciad, Book II. ver. 123. Three wicked imps of her own Grub-street choir, She drest like Congreve, Addison, and Prior. And again in the same book, ver. 138. Cook shall be Prior, and Concanen, Swift, A silken web; and ne'er shall fade And Venus shall the texture bless," &c. Come we now to his translation of the Iliad, celebrated by numerous pens, yet shall it suffice to mention the indefatigable SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE, KT. Who (though otherwise a severe censurer of our author) yet styleth this a " laudable translation."* That ready writer MR. OLDMIXON, in his forementioned essay, frequently commends the same. And the painful MR. LEWIS THEOBALD thus extolls it: "The spirit of Homer breathes all through this translation.-I am in doubt, whether I should most admire the justness to the original, or the force and beauty of the language, or the sounding variety of the numbers; but when I find all these meet, it puts me in mind of what the poet says of one of his heroes, That he alone raised and flung with ease a weighty stone, that two common men could not lift from the ground; just so, one single person has performed in this translation, what I once despaired to have seen * In his Essays, vol. i. printed for E. Curl. P. done by the force of several masterly hands." Indeed the same gentleman appears to have changed his sentiment in his Essay on the Art of sinking in Reputation (printed in Mist's Journal, March 30, 1728), where he says thus: "In order to sink in Reputation, let him take it into his head to descend into Homer (let the world wonder as it will, how the devil he got there) and pretend to do him into English, so his version denote his neglect of the manner how." Strange variation! We are told in MIST'S JOURNAal, June 8. "That this translation of the Iliad was not in all respects conformable to the fine taste of his friend Mr. Addison; insomuch, that he employed a younger muse in an undertaking of this kind, which he supervised himself." Whether Mr. Addison did find it conformable to his taste, or not, best appears from his own testimony, in the year following its publication, in these words: MR. ADDISON, Freeholder, No. 40. "When I consider myself as a British freeholder, I am in a particular manner pleased with the labours of those who have improved our language with the translations of old Greek and Latin authors. We have already most of their Historians in our own tongue, and what is more for the honour of our language, it has been taught to express with elegance the greatest of their poets in |