ESSAY V.

On DYER'S RUINS of ROME.

FICTIOUS or imaginary scenes or

actions, described or narrated in verfe, have always been held in high eftimation. But as fiction is allowed to increase in value, in proportion as it resembles truth, it will of course follow, that truth itself, defcribed or narrated in like manner, must be most of all valuable. Fiction and truth are fometimes equally susceptible of poetical ornament, and if both be equally adorned, furely no man

H

can

can hesitate a moment to determine which is preferable.

The Defcriptive Poem in general has concern only with truth, that is to fay, with a real place or fituation, of more or lefs importance. The Poem now under confideration, peculiarly fortunate in its choice, has for its fubject the actual remains of the first city in the universe a subject whose grandeur it must be needlefs, and indeed difficult, to exaggerate; whose history could not fail to intereft, and whose moral must instruct; à fubject affording pictures of past and prefent magnificence, narration of the rife and fall of empire, applaufe of liberty and virtue, and cenfure of tyranny and vice. But even fuch a subject in the hands of a Denham, or a Garth, would have become a Cooper's-Hill, or a Claremont; would have been degraded with profaifms, and obfcured with metaphors, encumbered with heterogeneous digreffions,

and

and perplexed with conceits and quibbles.* What Dyer has made of it is now to be fhewn.

V. I. Enough of Grongar, and the shady dales
Of winding Towy, Merlin's fabled haunt,
I fung inglorious. Now the love of arts,
And what in metal or in ftone remains
Of proud antiquity, through various realms
And various languages and ages fam'd,
Bears me remote, o'er Gallia's woody bounds,
O'er the cloud-piercing Alps remote; beyond
The vale of Arno purpled with the vine,
Beyond the Umbrian and Etrufcan hills,
To Latium's wide champaign forlorn and wafte,
Where yellow Tiber his neglected wave
Mournfully rolls. Yet once again my muse,
Yet once again, and foar a loftier flight;
Lo the refiftless theme, imperial Rome.

BELLAY'S RUINS of ROME, mentioned page 12, of thefe ESSAYS, is a work of fome merit, but deserves part of the above character. DYER has borrowed nothing from it; he had no occafion, he copied a better original, he painted immediately from nature.

The typographical marks, by which reading is affifted, are not fo numerous in our language, as to justify us in parting with any of them. The crotchets, formerly appropriated to point out a suspension of sense, and comprize words that may be omitted, are now moftly difufed this alteration in the mode of printing, though it may please the eye, by no means contributes to perfpicuity. The fecond period of the above passage, from a confiderable part of it being parenthetical, and yet not marked as a parenthefis, becomes rather obfcure. The reader does not immediately determine the author's meaning, viz. that the • love of the arts, and of the remains of antiquity, renowned in various realms, bears the poet languages, and • remote;' but is almoft ready to fuppofe that the love of arts, and of the ⚫ remains of antiquity, bears him through ‹ various realms, languages, and ages.' The metonymy, by which we are accuf

ages,

tomed

tomed to find languages fubftituted for people, countenances the mistake; and it is the word ages alone, which in fuch a connection would produce nonfenfe, that precludes the ambiguity.

The idea of progreffion given by the Poet's specification of the places paffed through, is very forcible, and the epithets bestowed on those places are strongly discriminative of their peculiarities; the woody bounds of Gallia, the cloud-piercing Alps, the viney vale of Arno, and the forlorn waste of the Campagna. Pope, in his Dunciad, has a paffage of this fpecies, moft poetically imagined and expreffed: that ludicrous poem is fcarcely place good enough for lines fo beautifully defcriptive and fweetly melodious: there are, indeed, few in our language that excel them. The travelling Governor leads his Pupil, on the grand tour,