vering around, who brought with them airs from heaven, or blafts from hell, that the ghoft was duely releafed from his prifon of torment at the found of the curfue, and that fairies imprinted myfterious circles on the turf by moonlight. Much of this credulity was even confecrated by the name of fcience and profound fpeculation. Profpero had not yet broken and buried his flaff, nor drowned his book deeper than did ever plummet found. It was now that the alchymift, and the judicial aftrologer, conducted his occult operations by the potent intercourfe of fome preternatural being, who came obfequious to his call, and was bound to accomplish his fevereft fervices, under certain conditions, and for a limited duration of time.. It was actually one of the pretended feats of thefe fantaftic philofophers, to evoke the Queen of the Fairies in the folitude of a gloomy grove, who, preceded by a fudden rustling of the leaves, appeared in robes of tranfcendent luftre *. The Shakespeare of a more inftructed and polished age, would not have given us a magician darkening the fun at noon, the fabbath of the witches, and the cauldron of incantation. Undoubtedly most of these notions were credited and entertained in a much higher degree, in the preceding periods. But the arts of compofition had not then made a fufficient progrefs, nor would the poets of thofe periods have managed them with fo much address and judgment. We were now arrived at that point, when the national credulity, chaftened by reafon, had produced a fort of civilized fuperftition, and left a fet of traditions fanciful enough for poetic decoration, and yet not too violent and chimerical for common fenfe. Hobbes, although no friend to this doctrine, obferves happily, "In a good poem both judgment and fancy are required; but the fancy must be more eminent, because they please for the EXTRAVAGANCY, but ought not to difpleafe by INDISCRETION .” In the mean time the Gothic romance, although fomewhat shook by the claffical fictions, and by the tales of Boccace and Bandello, still maintained its ground; and the daring machineries of giants, dragons, and inchanted cales, borrowed from the magic ftorehouse of Boiardo, Ariofto, and Taffo, began to be employed by the Epic Mufe. Thefe ornaments have been cenfured by the bigotry of precife and fervile critics, as abounding in whimsical abfurdities, and as unwarrantable deviations from the practice of Homer and Virgil. The author of An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, is wiliing to allow a fertility of genius, and a felicity of expreffion, to Talfo and Ariofto; but at the fame time complains, that, " quitting life, they betook themselves to aerial beings and Utopian characters, and filled their works with Charms and Vitions, the modern Supple ments of the Marvellous and Sublime. The best poets copy Nature, and give it fuch as they find it. When once they lofe fight of this, they write falfe, be their talents ever fo great ." But what fhall we fay of thofe Utopians, the Cyclopes and the Leftrigons in the Odyffey? The hippogrif of Ariofto may be oppofed to the harpies of Virgil. If leaves are turned into thips in the Orlando, nymphs are transformed into ships in the Eneid. Cacus is a more unnatural Lilly's Life, p. 151. ↑ Sect. V. p. 69. + Leviath. Part i.ch. viii. favage favage than Caliban. Nor am I convinced, that the imagery of Ifmeno's necromantic forest in the Gierufalemme Liberata, guarded by walls and battlements of fire, is lefs marvellous and fublime, than the leap of Juno's horfes in the Iliad, celebrated by Longinus for its fingular magnificence and dignity. On the principles of this critic, Voltaire's Henriad may be placed at the head of the modern epic. But I forbear to anticipate my opinion of a fyftem, which will more properly be confidered, when I come to fpeak of Spenfer. I must, however, obferve here, that the Gothic and Pagan fictions were now frequently blended and incorporated. The Lady of the Lake floated in the fuite of Neptune before Queen Elifabeth at Kenilworth; Ariel affumes the femblance of a fea-nymph, and Hecate, by an easy affociation, conducts the rites of the weird fifters in Macbeth. Allegory had been derived from the religious dramas into our civil fpectacles. The mafques and pageantries of the age of Elifabeth were not only furnished by the Heathen divinities, but often by the virtues and vices imperfonated, fignificantly decorated, accurately diftinguished by their proper types, and reprefented by living actors. The ancient fymbolical thews of this fort began now to lofe their old barbarifm and a mixture of religion, and to affume a degree of poetical elegance and precision. Nor was it only in the conformation of particular figures that much fancy was fhewn, but in the contexture of fome of the fables or devices prefented by groupes of ideal perfonages. Thefe exhibitions quickened creative invention, and reflected back on poetry what poetry had given. From their familiarity and public nature, they formed a national tafte for allegory; and the allegorical poets were now writing to the people. Even romance was turned into this channel. In the Fairy Queen, allegory is wrought upon chivalry, and the feats and figments of Arthur's round table are moralifed. The virtues of magnificence and chastity are here perfonified: but they are imaged with the forms, and under the agency, of romantic knights and damfels. What was an afterthought in Taffo, appears to have been Spenfer's premeditated and primary defign. In the mean time, we must not confound these moral combatants of the Fairy Queen with fome of its other embodied abitractions, which are purely and profeffedly allegorical. It may here be added, that only a few critical treatifes, and but one Art of Poetry, were now written. Sentiments and images were not abfolutely determined by the canons of compofition: nor was genius awed by the confcioufnefs of a future and final arraignment at the tribunal of taste. A certain dignity of inattention to niceties is now viable in our writers. Without too clofely confulting a criterion of correctness, every man indulged his own capricioufnefs of invention. The poet's appeal was chiefly to his own voluntary feelings, his own immediate and peculiar mode of conception. And this freedom of thought was often expreffed in an undisguised franknefs of diction. A circumitance, by the way, that greatly contributed to give the flowing modulation which now marked the measures of our poets, and which foon degenerated into the oppofite extreme of Iliad, V. 770. Longin. §. ix. diffonance diffonance and afperity. Selection and difcrimination were often overlooked. Shakespeare wandered in purfuit of univerfal nature. The glancings of his eye are from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. We behold him breaking the barriers of imaginary method. In the fame scene, he defcends from his meridian of the nobleft tragic fublimity to puns and quibbles, to the meaneft merriments of a plebeian farce. In the midit of his dignity, he refembles his own Richard the Second, the skipping King, who fometimes difcarding the itate of a monarch, Mingled his royalty with carping fools *. He feems not to have feen any impropriety, in the most abrupt tranfitions, from Dukes to buffoons, from Senators to failors, from Counsellors to conftables, and from Kings to clowns. Like Virgil's majestic oak, Quantum vertice ad auras Etherias, tantum radice in Tartara tendit †. No Satires, properly fo called, were written till towards the latter end of the Queen's reign, and then but a few. Pictures drawn at large of the vices of the times, did not fuit readers who loved to wander in the regions of artificial manners. The Mufe, like the people, was too folemn and referved, too ceremonious and pedantic, to floop to common life. Satire is the poetry of a nation highly polifhed. The importance of the female character was not yet acknowledged, nor were women admitted into the general commerce of fociety. The effect of that intercourfe had not imparted a comic air to poetry, nor foftened the feverer tone of our verfification with the levities of gallantry, and the familiarities of compliment, fometimes perhaps operating on ferious fubjects, and imperceptibly fpreading themfelves in the general habits of ftyle and thought. I do not mean to infinuate, that our poetry has fuffered from the great change of manners, which this affumption of the gentler fex, or rather the improved fate of female education, has produced, by giving elegance and variety to life, by enlarging the fphere of converfation, and by multiplying the topics and enriching the ftores of wit and humour. But I am marking the peculiarities of compofition: and my meaning was to fuggeft, that the abfence of fo important a circumftance from the modes and conftitution of ancient life, must have influenced the cotemporary poetry. Of the ftate of manners among our ancestors refpecting this point, many traces remain. Their ftyle of courtship may be collected from the love-dialogues of Hamlet, young Percy, Henry the Fifth, and Mafter Fenton. Their tragic heroines, their Desdemonas and Ophelias, although of fo much confequence in the piece, are degraded to the back-ground. In comedy, their ladies are nothing more than MERRY WIVES, plain and cheerful matrons, who stand upon the charines of their bonefly In the smaller poems, if a lover praifes his mitreis, fhe is complimented in trains neither polite nor pathetic, without elegance and without affection: fhe is Fift Part Henry IV. A&t iii. Sc. ii. † Georg. ii. 291. defcribed defcribed, not in the addrefs of intelligible yet artful panegyric, not in the real colours, and with the genuine accomplishments, of nature, but as an eccentric ideal being of another fytem, and as infpiring fentiments equally unmeaning, hyperbolical, and unnatural. All or most of thefe circumftances, contributed to give a defcriptive, a picturefque, and a figurative caft to the poetical language. This effect appears even in the profe compofitions of the reign of Elifabeth. In the fubfequent age, profe became the language of poetry. In the mean time, general knowledge was encreafing with a wide diffufion and a hafty rapidity. Books began to be multiplied, and a variety of the most useful and rational topics had been difcuffed in our own language. But fcience had not made too great advances. On the whole, we were now arrived at that period, propitious to the operations of original and true poetry, when the coynefs of fancy was not always proof against the approaches of reafon, when genius was rather directed than governed by judgment, and when tafte and learning had fo far only dif.iplined imagination, as to fuffer its exceffes to pafs without cenfure or controul, for the fake of the beauties to which they were allied. ART. II. The Book of Pfalms. as tranflated, paraphrafed, or imitated, by fome of the molt eminent English Poets, viz. Addifon, Blacklock, Carter, Merrick, Watts, &c. and adapted to Chriftian Worship, in a Form the most likely to give general Satisfaction. To which is prefixed, A Differtation on Scripture Imprecations. By Benjamin Williams. 8vo. 4 s. fewed. Johnfon. 1781. THE differtation prefixed to this collection, is written with THH the view of vindicating the facred writers in general, and the Pfalmifts in particular, against the heavy, but happily illfounded charge, of indulging and countenancing a malevolent fpirit. The differtator obferves, that the imprecatory paffages which are to be found in the English tranflation of the Old Teftament, and more efpecially the Pfalms, have given great and juft offence, and been the caufe of much painful difquietude to ferious, unlearned Chriftians of all denominations. They had alfo (he remarks) been employed in the hands of infidelity, as one of the moft powerful engines to undermine the credit of Divine Revelation in general, and the moft fuccessful means of expofing it to contempt and ridicule. 66 To give fome proof of this laft affertion, the author appeals to the Hiftory of the Man after God's own Heart;" and obferves, that the facetious hiftorian' hath availed himself of "the ekeings out of Meffis. Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins," to charge David himself with pouring out, even in his devotions, the moft rancorous curfes on his enemies. He acknowledges that the hiftorian's' reflections would be as just as they are shrewd and farcaftic, if Sternhold and Hopkins had 5 been been faithful interpreters of David's Pfalms. But as they were not, the infidel's attack muft, of confequence, be impotent: and at the utmoft difcover only what he wifhed, not what he could prove. After fome general obfervations on the benevolent design of the Old Teftament, Mr. Williams attempts to establish the following pofition, that the Hebrew texts exprefs no kind of wish, but are only fo many denunciations of the just displeasure of God against thofe, who were or fhould be guilty of the feveral fins there mentioned, and of the judgments they might reasonably expect to follow, unless prevented by a timely and thorough repentance. And, agreeably to this, the facred texts ought to have been rendered, "Curfed they; or "curfed are they," and not "curfed be they," in the fenfe of Let them be curfed: the word be, though inferted in our tranflation, having nothing anfwerable to it in the Hebrew.' In a preliminary difcourfe the Author fpeaks of his object in the present copious collection; and briefly confiders the comparative excellencies of the three principal versions of the Pfalms, viz. By Watts, by Tate and Brady, and by Merrick. He claffes Dr. Watts in the very firft rank, as a divine poet and fuppofes that his verfion, or rather imitation of the Pfalms, is, upon the whole, better fitted for Chriftian worship than any other compofition. The Doctor (fays Mr. Williams) was a perfon of exemplary meekness and humility, fo perfectly goodnatured, and of fuch unconfined charity, that he wished to avoid every word and fyllable, that was likely to give the smallest offence to serious Chriftians of any denomination. And when he found, in the latter part of life, he had not been so successful in this refpect as he had aimed to be, he wished for nothing more ardently, than fufficient health and time to revise both his Pfalms and Hymns, in order to render them wholly unexceptionable to every Christian profeffor.' In a note the Author obferves, that this account was received from Dr. Watts himself, a few years before his death, by the late Dr. Amory, and by him given to one of his pupils, who communicated it to the Editor. The Editor has also good authority to add, that the revifal, fo fervently wifhed for, was undertaken and finished, and would moft certainly have been published, had not the Author's death unhappily prevented it.' That the Doctor had altered his opinion with respect to fome points, of what is called Orthodoxy, is undeniable. This is a fubject that fome of his encomiafts fhrink from with concealed mortification, and would, if poffible, confign to oblivion, as it cannot be remembered, without bringing fome reflection either on the Doctor himself or their own darling caufe. But it would be in vain to deny a faćt known to many, whọ were interested in |