With headlong weight a fiercer blast descends,

And with sharp whirring crafh the main-fail rends;
Loud fhrieks of horror through the fleet refound,
Bursts the torn cordage, rattle far around
The splinter'd yard-arms; from each bending mast,
In many a shred, far ftreaming on the blast
The canvas floats; low finks the leeward fide,
O'er the broad veffels rolls the fwelling tide;
Oh strain each nerve, the frantic pilot cries,
Oh now-and inftant every nerve applies,
Tugging what cumbrous lay with ftrainful force;
Dafh'd by the ponderous loads the furges hoarfe
Roar in new whirls: the dauntlefs foldiers ran
To pump, yet ere the groaning pump began
The wave to vomit, o'er the decks o'erthrown
In groveling heaps the stagger'd foldiers groan:
So rowls the veffel, not the boldest three,

Of arm robufteft, and of firmeft knee,

Can guide the starting rudder; from their hands
The helm bursts; fcarce a cable's ftrength commands
The ftaggering fury of its ftarting bounds,
While to the forceful beating furge resounds
The hollow crazing hulk: with kindling rage
The adverfe winds the adverfe winds engage:
As from its bafe of rock their banded power
Strove in the duft to ftrew fome lordly tower,
Whofe dented battlements in middle sky
Frown on the tempeft and its rage defy;

So roar'd the winds: high o'er the rest upborne
On the wide mountain-wave's flant ridge forlorn,

At times difcover'd by the lightnings blue,
Hangs GAMA's lofty veffel, to the view
Small as her boat; o'er Paulus' fhatter'd prore
Falls the tall main-maft prone with crashing roar;
Their hands, yet grafping their uprooted hair,
The failors lift to heaven in wild despair;
The Saviour God each yelling voice implores :
Nor lefs from brave Coello's war-ship pours
The fhriek, fhrill rolling on the tempeft's wings:
Dire as the bird of death at midnight fings.
His dreary howlings in the fick man's ear,
The answering fhriek from ship to ship they hear.
Now on the mountain-billows upward driven,
The navy mingles with the clouds of heaven;
Now rushing downward with the finking waves,
Bare they behold old ocean's vaulty caves.
The eastern blaft against the western pours,
Against the southern storm the northern roars :
From pole to pole the flashy lightnings glare,
One pale blue twinkling fheet enwraps the air;
In fwift fucceffion now the volleys fly,
Darted in pointed curvings o'er the sky,
And through the horrors of the dreadful night,
O'er the torn waves they fhed a ghaftly light;
The breaking furges flame with burning red,
Wider and louder still the thunders spread,

As

As if the folid heavens together crush'd,
Expiring worlds on worlds expiring rush'd,
And dim-brow'd Chaos ftruggled to regain
The wild confusion of his ancient reign.
Not fuch the volley when the arm of Jove
From heaven's high gates the rebel Titans drove;
Not fuch fierce lightnings blazed athwart the flood,
When, faved by heaven, Deucalion's vessel rode

C

High o'er the deluged hills. Along the shore
The halcyons, mindful of their fate, deplore;
As beating round on trembling wings they fly,
Shrill through the ftorm their woeful clamours die.
So from the tomb, when midnight veils the plains,
With a fhrill, faint voice, th' untimely ghoft complains.

The

The balcyons, mindful of their fate, deplore.Ceyx, king of Trachinia, fon of Lucifer, married Alcyone, the daughter of Eolus. On a voyage to confult the Delphic oracle he was fhipwrecked. His corpfe was thrown ashore in the view of his fpoufe, who, in the agonies of her love and despair, threw herself into the fea. The gods, in pity of her pious fidelity, metamorphofed them into the birds which bear her name. The halcyon is a little bird, about the fize of a thrufh, its plumage of a beautiful sky blue, mixed with some traits of white and carnation. It is vulgarly called the King, or Martin Fisher. The halcyons very seldom appear but in the finest weather, whence they are fabled to build their nefts on the waves. The female is no lefs remarkable than the turtle, for her conjugal affection. She nourishes and attends the male when fick, and furvives his death but a few days. When the halcyons are furprifed in a tempeft, they fly about as in the utmost terror, with the most lamentable and doleful cries. To introduce them therefore in the picture of a ftorm, is a proof both of the tafte and judgment of Camoëns.

& With fhrill faint voice th' untimely ghost complains. -It may not perhaps be unentertaining to cite Madam Dacier, and Mr. Pope, on the voices of

The amorous dolphins to their deepest caves
In vain retreat to fly the furious waves;
High o'er the mountain-capes the ocean flows,
And tears the aged forefts from their brows:

The

the dead. It will, at least, afford a critical observation, which appears to have escaped them both. "The shades of the fuitors (observes Dacier) "when they are summoned by Mercury out of the palace of Ulysses, emit a "feeble, plaintive, inarticulate found, Tir, ftrident: whereas Aga66 memnon, and the fhades that have been long in the ftate of the dead, "speak articulately. I doubt not but Homer intended to fhew, by the "former description, that when the soul is separated from the organs of the "body, it ceases to act after the fame manner as while it was joined to it; "but how the dead recover their voices afterwards is not easy to under❝ftand. In other respects Virgil paints after Homer:

Pars tollere vocem

Exiguam inceptus clamor fruftratur biantes."

To this Mr. Pope replies, "But why should we suppose with Dacier, that "these fhades of the fuitors (of Penelope) have loft the faculty of speaking? "I rather imagine that the founds they uttered were signs of complaint "and discontent, and proceeded not from an inability to speak. After "Patroclus was flain, he appears to Achilles, and speaks very articulately to "him; yet to express his forrow at his departure, he acts like these fuitors; for Achilles

Like a thin smoke beholds the spirit fly,

And hears a feeble, lamentable cry.

"Dacier conjectures, that the power of speech ceases in the dead, till they "are admitted into a state of reft; but Patroclus is an instance to the con"trary in the Iliad, and Elpenor in the Odyfey, for they both speak before "their funereal rites are performed, and confequently before they enter "into a state of repofe amongst the fhades of the happy."

The critic, in his fearch for diftant proofs, often omits the most material one immediately at hand. Had Madam Dacier attended to the episode of the fouls of the fuitors, the world had never feen her ingenuity in these mythological conjectures; nor had Mr. Pope any need to bring the cafe of Patroclus or Elpenor to overthrow her fyftem. Amphimedon, one of the fuitors, in the very episode which gave birth to Dacier's conjecture, tells his story very articu

7

The pine and oak's huge finewy roots uptorn,
And from their beds the dusky fands, upborne
On the rude whirlings of the billowy fweep,
Imbrown the surface of the boiling deep.
High to the poop the valiant GAMA springs,
And all the rage of grief his bosom wrings,
Grief to behold, the while fond hope enjoy'd
The meed of all his toils, that hope destroy'd.
In awful horror loft the hero ftands,

And rowls his eyes to heaven, and fpreads his hands,
While to the clouds his veffel rides the fwell,
And now her black keel ftrikes the gates of hell;
Oh thou, he cries, whom trembling heaven obeys,
Whose will the tempeft's furious madnefs fways,

Who,

articulately to the fhade of Agamemnon, though he had not received the funereal rites:

Our mangled bodies now deform'd with gore,
Cold and neglected spread the marble floor :
No friend to bathe our wounds! or tears to hed
O'er the pale corfe! the honours of the dead.

Odyff. xxiv.

On the whole, the defence of Pope is almoft as idle as the conjectures of Dacier. The plain truth is, poetry delights in perfonification: every thing in it, as Ariftotle fays of the Iliad, has manners; poetry must therefore perfonify according to our ideas. Thus in Milton:

Tears, fuch as angels weep, burst forth

And thus in Homer, while the fuitors are conducted to hell;

Trembling the fpectres glide, and plaintive vent

Thin, hollow fcreams, along the deep descent :

and, unfettered with mythological diftinctions, either fhriek or articulately talk, according to the most poetical view of their supposed circumstances.