guided by the sound of the original Greek.' This version of the Iliad is a curious production. The author says he hopes he is not so partial to himself as to suppose, without reason, that it may convey some new idea of the original to readers of real taste. He will, he owns, be much disappointed, if his readers will take his version for MERE PROSE. Though he has avoided, with great attention, to fall into the cadence of the English heroic verse, a fault scarce ever separated from poetical prose, he has measured the whole in his ear.' We will quote the first paragraph of the work, which has become scarce in consequence of its utter worthlessness: the punctuation is Macpherson's, designed, he tells us, to bring the eye of the reader to the assistance of his ear.

The wrath of the son of Peleus,- -O goddess of song, unfold! The deadly wrath of Achilles: To Greece the source of many woes! Which peopled the regions of death-with shades of heroes untimely slain : While pale they lay along the shore: Torn by beasts and birds of prey : But such was the will of Jove! Begin the verse, from the source of rage, between Achilles and the sovereign of men.

The Ossianized Iliad could do no injury to our literature, but that literature has suffered much from another translation of a very different character. Of Pope's Homer we are, as Englishmen, proud to acknowledge the great and general merits. It must be confessed, however, that amidst every beauty, we find much of that perverse style which is calculated to dazzle and mislead a young writer. True to the maxim of his favourite Boileau,

Le poëte s'égaye en mille inventions,

Orne, élève, embellit, agrandit toutes choses.

Whatever Homer has said must, in literal obedience to this doctrine, be ornamented, elevated, embellished, and exaggerated. This is done in very different degrees; sometimes with a delicacy which hardly oversteps the original sentiment, yet oftener with a verboseness and amplification equally adverse to Homer and a just taste. If Homer speaks of blood flowing, Pope tells us that slaughtered heroes swell the dreadful tide;' if Homer brings Discord into the field, Pope makes her bathe the purple plain;' if Homer speaks of glittering arms, Pope makes them lighten all the strand. At the prayer of Ajax, in the original, the sun shone full, and the whole battle was displayed,

Ηέλιος δ' επέλαμψε, μάχη δ ̓ ἐπὶ πᾶσα φαάνθη,

in the translation,

Forth burst the sun with all enlightening ray,
The blaze of armour flash'd against the day.
In the Greek, Apollo moves like the night,
ὁ δ ̓ ἤις νυκτὶ ἐοικως ;

in the English,

a sudden night he spread,

And gloomy darkness roll'd around his head.

In the original he sends his arrow

μετα

in the translation, the feathered fates fly below. But it is perhaps in the descriptive similies that the perversion of the original is most observable. Boileau advises the poet,

Que de traits surprenans sans cesse il nous réveille!

Qu'il coure dans ses vers de merveille en merveille!

and Pope does indeed surprise those readers who understand what they are reading with marvellous descriptions. He had read of comets, and he had seen a sky-rocket; his comet therefore

Shakes the sparkles from its blazing hair.

Lightning also, according to him, appears in sparks, and, what is more wonderful, in streams of sparks; it kindles all the skies, and extends from one pole to another. Homer says that Pallas inspires Menelaus with boldness

such as prompts the fly, which oft

From flesh of man repulsed, her purpose yet

To bite holds fast, resolv'd on human blood.-Cowper.

Καὶ οἱ μύνης θάρσος ἐνι σήθεσσιν ἐνῆκεν,

Ητε, καὶ εἰργομένη μάλα περ χροὺς ἀνδρομέοιο,
Ισχανάα δακέειν, λαρόν τέ οι αἷμ ̓ ἀνθρώπε.

Pope transforms this blood-sucker fly into a hornet, which is not produced like ordinary hornets, being the son of Air and Heat,

So turns the vengeful hornet, soul all o'er,
Repulsed in vain, and thirsty still of gore;
Bold son of Air and Heat, on angry wings
Untam'd, untir'd, he turns, attacks and stings.

In Dr. Rees's Cyclopædia, under the article Poetry,' we are told that Pope has translated the description of Night in the eighth book of the Iliad with singular felicity: perhaps no passage in the whole translation has been more frequently quoted and admired. But, as old Henry More says,

now let's sift the verity

Of this opinion, and with reason rude
Rub, crush, toss, rifle this fine phantasie.

The original lines are these:

Ως δ ̓ ὅτ' ἐν ἐρανῷ ἄτρα φαεινὴν ἀμφὶ σελήνην
Φαίνετ ̓ ἀριπρεπέα, ὅτε τ ̓ ἔπλετο νήνεμος αιθήρ,
Εκ τ ̓ ἔφανον πᾶσαι σκοπιαὶ, καὶ πρώονες ἄκροι,
Καὶ νάπαι· ἐρανόθεν δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ὑπερράγη ἄσπετος αιθήρ,
Πάντα δέ τ ̓ εἴδεται ἄτρα γέγηθε δέ τε φρένα ποιμὴν

છે.

As

As when around the clear bright moon, the stars
Shine in full splendour, and the winds are hush'd,
The groves, the mountain-tops, the headland-heights
Stand all apparent; not a vapour streaks

The boundless blue, but æther open'd wide

All glitters, and the shepherd's heart is cheer'd.-Cowper.
How has Pope rendered this description?

As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night!
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole;
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tipt with silver every mountain's head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies:
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,

Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.

Here are the planets rolling round the moon; here is the pole gilt and glowing with stars; here are trees made yellow and mountains tipt with silver by the moonlight; and here is the whole sky in a flood of glory; appearances not to be found either in Homer or in nature; finally these gilt and glowing skies, at the very time when they are thus pouring forth a flood of glory, are represented as a blue vault! The astronomy in these lines would not appear more extraordinary to Dr. Herschell than the imagery to every person who has observed moonlight scenes.

Hobbes has said, 'that which giveth a poem the true and natural colour, consisteth in two things, which are, to know well, that is, to have images of nature in the memory distinct and clear: and to know much.' But images of nature were not in fashion during the prevalence of the French school: from Dryden to Thomson, there is scarcely a rural image drawn from life to be found in any of the English poets, except Gay and Lady Winchelsea; and for the duty of knowing much before they begin to write, too many of our poets, and almost all our professional critics, would have done well had they borne in mind the saying of Skelton,

How rivers run not till the spring be full;

Better a dumb mouth than a brainless skull.

Among the causes of the corruption of poetry, Hobbes enumerates the number of words in use which, though of magnifique sound, yet, like the windy blisters of a troubled water, have no sense at all;' and yet are hardly to be avoided, because having been obtruded upon our youth, they have grown up with us, and gaining

6

reputation with the ignorant, are not easily shaken off he notices also the ambitious obscurity of expressing more than is perfectly conceived, or perfect conception in fewer words than it requires; which expressions, though they have had the honour to be called strong lines, are indeed no better than riddles.' Yet there have been writers who were ambitious of composing poems wholly in strong lines! Taking Pope for their master, they culled every thing that was vicious in his style for imitation, and what was good they spoilt by misapplying it. With these writers the lines were always to be nicely balanced in semi-sentences; the verb, whether the subject required it or not, was to be placed as often as possible at the beginning of the verse; if there were another at the end to make it like an amphisbæna, it was better still; nothing was then wanting but an antithesis to make it perfect; the meaning, perhaps, will not supply this, but it suffices to have it in the sound, and then the poet is happy, omne tulit punctum, he has produced a strong line, and whether it be sense or syntax is a question which neither he nor his admirers think of asking themselves.

By these writers verbs-neuter are endowed with a preternatural activity. In their collocation of words it is sometimes impossible to discover whether the horse draws the cart, or the cart the horse, so ingeniously do they place the accusative case before the verb, and the verb before the nominative. We remember a happy instance of this kind of transposition, in which, instead of the sword splitting the man's head, the man's head is made to split the sword-for, says the poet,

'the standard-bearer's head

Asunder cleft the unresisted blade.'

Their personages must all stand confessed, like one of Homer's or rather Pope's divinities, and we have all the man, and all the woman, all the hero, and all the God, with all the other common-places of poetry made upon the most approved receipt. Brooke, when he tells us that worms move in the ground, says that all the worm insinuates through the pore.' Brooke was a man of undoubted genius, and the complete failure of such a man, and of Darwin, who followed him in this style, and carried it to its highest pitch, cannot be imputed to any want of skill or ability in the writers. The principle upon which they went was radically wrong. As Sidney says, they 'cast sugar and spice upon every dish that is served at the table, like those Indrans who, not content to wear ear-rings, thrust jewels through their nose and lips, because they will be seen to be fine.'

It is worthy of remark, that notwithstanding the poetical supremacy which Pope so long enjoyed, not one poet of eminence. has arisen in his school. Thomson and Young, though infected

with many of the faults of the age, had each a manner of his own; the former brought with him stores of observation from the country, the latter a strong devotional passion, which produced the greater effect, because passion of every kind had been banished from poetry: so miserably,' as old Dennis says,' was the art fallen by the extravagance of its professors, and by the unskilfulness of its admirers! Dennis will one day have justice done him as a critic; he wrote villainous verses, but he knew what poetry ought to be, and did not define it, like some others, to be the Art of Pleasing. 'It is an art,' he says, 'by which a poet excites passion in order to satisfy and improve, to delight and reform the mind, and so to make mankind happier and better: from which it appears that poetry has two ends, a subordinate and a final one; the subordinate one is pleasure, and the final one is instruction.' He did not live to see the dawn of the Reformation which he desired; but it was not long delayed. Glover led the way with a Grecian manliness of sentiment, and somewhat of a Grecian nakedness of style: but when our statues had been drest in full uniform and full-bottomed wigs, it was no slight reform to strip them. Akeuside had an elevation of mind which supported a style sometimes elevated above its mark. A different school was begun by Gilbert West, with whom Mason and the Wartons are to be classed. The Wartons were far from writing purely; but no men contributed so much to the reformation of English poetry. They brought us back to the study of the Elizabethan writers; and under the elder brother, Winchester may almost be said to have become a school of poets. There the author of Lewesdon Hill was bred, who is only to be censured for having written so little when he wrote so well; Headly, who, had his life been spared, would have trod in the steps of those predecessors whose merit's he so judiciously appreciated; Russel, whose early death is perhaps more to be lamented than even that of Chatterton, so beautiful was the promise of his youth; and Bowles, who yet lives, and to whom we gladly offer our thanks for the pleasure which we derived from his poems in our younger days. Bampfylde, though not a Wickhamist, should be mentioned with Russel, as closely resembling him in the cast of his poetry: the remains of both have most properly found a place in Mr. Park's edition of the poets, the only collection in which a proper degree of attention has been given to the purity of the text it is therefore greatly to be regretted that it should have been left incomplete.

And here many names occur which require more than the cursory notice which is all we can now bestow :— Mason, who aimed at noble things, but whose works are overlaid with ornament like the foreground of a French landscape; Gray, of all men the most patient and successful artist in the finer mosaic; Collins, whose exquisite

odes,