for the most part upon a strong syllable, as the | No. 91.]
fourth and sixth; but those pauses which only
suspend the sense may be placed upon the weak-
er. Thus the rest in the third line of the first
passage satisfies the ear better than in the fourth,
and the close of the second quotation better than
of the third.

The rest in the fifth place has the same inconvenience as in the seventh and third, that the syl-vened, in which it was resolved, that Patronage

If the poetry of Milton be examined, with regard to the pauses and flow of his verses into In time, however, the number of those who each other, it will appear that he has performed had miscarried in their pretensions grew so great, all that our language would admit; and the com- that they became less ashamed of their repulses; parison of his numbers with those who have cul- and, instead of hiding their disgrace in retiretivated the same manner of writing, will show ment, began to besiege the gates of the palace, that he excelled as much in the lower as the and obstruct the entrance of such as they thought higher parts of his art, and that his skill in har-likely to be more caressed. The decisions of mony was not less than his invention or his Patronage, who was but half a goddess, had learning been sometimes erroneous; and though she al

ways made haste to rectify her mistakes, a few | competitors. Infamy flew round the hall, and instances of her fallibility encouraged every one scattered mildews from her wings, with which to appeal from her judgment to his own, and that every one was stained; Reputation followed her of his companions, who are always ready to cla- with slower flight, and endeavoured to hide the mour in the common cause, and elate each other blemishes with paint, which was immediately with reciprocal applause. 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, and Impudence incited them to accept a second invitation, and lay their claim again before Patronage. They were again, for the most part, sent back with ignominy, but found hope not It frequently happened that Science, unwillalienated, and Impudence more resolutely zeal-ing to lose the ancient prerogative of recomous; they therefore contrived new expedients, mending to Patronage, would lead her followers and hoped at last to prevail by their multitudes, into the Hall of Expectation; but they were soon which were always increasing, and their perse-discouraged from attending; for not only Envy verance, which Hope and Impudence forbade

them to relax.

Patronage having been long a stranger to the heavenly assemblies, began to degenerate towards terrestrial nature, and forgot the precepts of Justice and Truth. Instead of confining her friendship to the Sciences, she suffered herself, by little and little, to contract an acquaintance with Pride the son of Falschood, by whose embraces 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.

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 often 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.

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 obedience, 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 Patronage had now learned to procure herself seek happiness in the regions of liberty, continued reverence by ceremonies and formalities, and, in- to spend hours, and days and years, courting the stead of admitting her petitioners to an immedi- smile of Caprice by the arts of Flattery; till at ate audience, ordered the antechamber to be length new crowds pressed in upon them, and erected, called among mortals the Hall of Ex-drove them forth at different outlets into the hapectation. 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 ut-pointments. most eagerness of desire, and agitated with all the anxieties of competition.

bitations 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 disap

No. 92.] SATURDAY, FEB. 2, 1751.

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 alternate exultation and dejection, delivered up to the sport of Suspicion, who was always whispering into their ear designs against them which were never formed, and of Envy, who diligently point-Ir has been long observed, that the idea of beau ed out the good fortune of one or other of their ty is vague and undefined, different in different

Jam nunc minaci murmure cornuum
Perstringis aures, jam litui strepunt.
Lo! now the clarion's voice I hear,
Its threatening murmurs pierce my ear,
And in thy lines with brazen breath
The trumpet sounds the charge of death.

HOR

FRANCIS.

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.

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,
Χερσὶ ψηλαφόων

Meantime the Cyclop raging with his wound,
Spreads his wide arms, and searches roum and round.

POPE.

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 mere-feet, and the strength of the consonants. ly 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.

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

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.

Δεῖνον δ' ἀμφ' Αχιλήα κυκώμενον ἵστατο κύμα.
*Ωθει δ' ἐν σάκεῖ πίπτων ρόος· οὐδὲ πόδεσσιν
Έσκε στηρίξασθαι.

So oft the surge, in watery mountains spread,
Beats on his back, or bursts upon his head;
Yet, dauntless still, the adverse flood he braves,
And still indignant bounds above the waves,
Tired by the tides, his knees relax with toil;
Wash'd from beneath him, slides the slimy soil.

POPE.

When Homer describes the crush of men dashed against a rock, he collects the most unpleasing and harsh sounds.

Σὺν δὲ δύω μάρψας, ὥστε σκύλακας ποτί γαιη
Κόπτ ̓ ἐκ δ ̓ ἐγκέφαλος χαμάδις ρέε, δεῦε δὲ γαῖαν.

-His bloody hand

Snatch'd two, unhappy! of my martial band,
And dash'd like dogs against the stony floor;
The pavement swims with brains and mingled gore.

POPE.

And when he would place before the eyes something dreadful and astonishing, he makes choice of the strongest vowels, and the letters of most

difficult utterance.

Τῆ δ ̓ ἐπὶ Γοργὼ βλοσυρῶπις ἐστεφάνωτο
Δεινὸν δερκομένη· περὶ δε Δείμος τε φόβος τε.
Tremendous Gorgon frown'd upon its field,
And circling terrors fill'd th' expressive shield.

POPE.

Many other examples Dionysius produces; There is nothing in the art of versifying so but these will sufficiently show, that either he much exposed to the power of imagination as the was fanciful, or we have lost the genuine proaccommodation of the sound to the sense, or the nunciation; for I know not whether, in any one representation of particular images, by the flow of these instances, such similitude can be dis of the verse in which they are expressed. Every covered. It seems, indeed, probable, that the student has innumerable passages, in which he, veneration with which Homer was read, proand perhaps he alone, discovers such resem- duced many supposititious beauties; for though blances; and since the attention of the present it is certain, that the sound of many of his verses race of poetical readers seems particularly turned very justly corresponds with the things expressupon this species of elegance, I shall endeavoured, yet, when the force of his imagination, which to examine how much these conformities have gave him full possession of every object, is conbeen observed by the poets, or directed by the cri-sidered, together with the flexibility of his lantics, 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

guage, 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

THE RAMBLER.

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.

ticisin. Such performances, however, are not wholly without their use; for they are commonly just echoes to the voice of fame, and transmit the general suffrage of mankind when they have no particular motives to suppress it.

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 otherwise 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.

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 dishonour to be sometimes misguided. Criticism has so often given occasion to the envious and ill-natured, of gratifying their malignity, that In trusting therefore to the sentence of a critic, some have thought it necessary to recommend we are in danger not only from that vanity which the virtue of candour without restriction, and to exalts writers too often to the dignity of teach-preclude all future liberty of censure. Writers ing what they are yet to learn, from that negli- possessed with this opinion are continually engence which sometimes steals upon the most vi- forcing civility and decency, recommending to gilant caution, and that fallibility to which the critics the proper diffidence of themselves, and condition of nature has subjected every human inculcating the veneration due to celebrated understanding; but from a thousand extrinsic names. 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,

Sæpe 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

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 li 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 harmless stupidity, or destroy the jest which makes