66 Our son to Pylos cut the briny wave;

But Nestor's self a dubious answer gave:
To Sparta next-nor even could Sparta tell
What seas you plough, or in what region dwell!
"Better had stood Apollo's sacred wall:

O could I now my former wish recall !

War my sole dread, the scene I then should know;
And thousands then would share the common woe:
But all things now, not knowing what to fear,
I dread; and give too large a field to care.
Whole lists of dangers, both by land and sea,
Are muster'd, to have caus'd so long delay.

"But while your conduct thus I fondly clear,
Perhaps (true man !) you court some foreign fair;
Perhaps you rally your domestic loves,
Whose art the snowy fleece alone improves.
No! may I err, and start at false alarms;
May nought but force detain you from my arms.

Urg'd by a father's right again to wed,
Firm I refuse, still faithful to your bed!
Still let him urge the fruitless vain design;
I am-I must be-and I will be thine.
Though melted by my chaste desires, of late
His rig'rous importunities abate.

"Of teasing suitors a luxurious train,

From neighbouring isles, have cross'd the liquid plain.
Here uncontroll'd th' audacious crews resort,

Rifle your wealth, and revel in your court.

Pisander, Polybus, and Medon, lead,

Antinous and Eurymachus succeed,

With others, whose rapacious throats devour

The wealth you purchas'd once, distain'd with gore.
Melanthius add, and Irus, hated name!

A beggar rival to complete our shame.

Three, helpless three! are here; a wife not strong,

A sire too aged, and a son too young,

He late, by fraud, embark'd for Pylos' shore,
Nigh from my arms for ever had been tore."

These two lines are replete with beauty: nigh, which implies approximation, and from, which implies distance, are, to use our translator's expressions, drawn as it were up in line of battle. Tore is put for torn, that is, torn by

fraud from her arms; not that her son played truant and embarked by fraud, as a reader who does not understand Latin might be apt to fancy.

"Heaven grant the youth survive each parent's date,

And no cross chance reverse the course of fate.

Your nurse and herdsman join this wish of mine,
And the just keeper of your bristly swine."

:

Our translator observes in a note, that "the simplicity expressed in these lines is so far from being a blemish, that it is, in fact, a very great beauty and the modern critic, who is offended with the mention of a sty, however he may pride himself upon his false delicacy, is either too shortsighted to penetrate into real nature, or has a stomach too nice to digest the noblest relics of antiquity." He means, no doubt, to digest a hog-sty; but, antiquity apart, we doubt if even Powell the fire-eater himself could bring his appetite to relish so unsavoury a repast.

"By age your sire disarm'd, and wasting woes,
The helm resigns, amidst surrounding foes.
This may your son resume (when years allow),
But oh! a father's aid is wanted now.
Nor have I strength his title to maintain,
Haste then, our only refuge, o'er the main."

"A son, and long may Heaven the blessing grant,
You have, whose years a sire's instructions want.
Think how Laërtes drags an age of woes,

In hope that you his dying eyes may close;

And I, left youthful in my early bloom,

Shall aged seem, how soon soe'er you come."

But let not the reader imagine we can find pleasure in thus exposing absurdities, which are too ludicrous for serious reproof. While we censure as critics, we feel as men, and could sincerely wish that those whose greatest sin is, perhaps, the venial one of writing bad verses, would regard their failure in this respect as we do, not as faults, but foibles; they may be good and useful members of

society, without being poets. The regions of taste can be travelled only by a few, and even those often find indifferent accommodation by the way. Let such as have not got a passport from nature be content with happiness, and leave the poet the unrivalled possession of his misery, his garret, and his fame.

We have of late seen the republic of letters crowded with some who have no other pretensions to applause but industry, who have no other merit but that of reading many books, and making long quotations: these we have heard extolled by sympathetic dunces, and have seen them carry off the rewards of genius; while others, who should have been born in better days, felt all the wants of poverty, and the agonies of contempt. Who, then, that has a regard for the public, for the literary honour of our country, for the figure we shall one day make among posterity, that would not choose to see such humbled as are possessed only of talents that might have made good cobblers, had fortune turned them to trade? Should such prevail, the real interests of learning must be in a reciprocal proportion to the power they possess. Let it be then the character of our periodical endeavours, and hitherto we flatter ourselves it has ever been, not to permit an ostentation of learning to pass for merit, nor to give a pedant quarter upon the score of his industry alone, even though he took refuge behind Arabic, or powdered his hair with hieroglyphics. Authors thus censured may accuse our judgment, or our reading, if they please, but our own hearts will acquit us of envy or ill-nature, since we reprove only with a desire to reform.

But we had almost forgot that our translator is to be considered as a critic as well as a poet; and in this department he seems also equally unsuccessful with the former. Criticism at present is different from what it was upon the revival of taste in Europe: all its rules are now well known;

the only art at present is, to exhibit them in such lights as contribute to keep the attention alive, and excite a favourable audience. It must borrow graces from eloquence, and please while it aims at instruction: but instead of this, we have a combination of trite observations, delivered in a style in which those who are disposed to make war upon words will find endless opportunities of triumph.

He is sometimes hypercritical. Thus, "Pope, in his excellent Essay on Criticism (as will, in its place, when you come to be lectured upon it, at full be explained), terms this making the sound an echo to the sense. But I apprehend that definition takes in but a part, for the best ancient poets excelled in thus painting to the eye as well as to the ear. Virgil, describing his housewife preparing her wine, exhibits the act of the fire to the

eye.

'Aut dulcis musti Vulcano decoquit humorem,

Et foliis undam trepidi dispumat aheni.'

"For the line (if I may be allowed the expression) boils over; and, in order to reduce it to its proper bounds, you must, with her, skim off the redundant syllable." These are beauties which, doubtless, the reader is displeased he cannot discern.

Sometimes confused: "There is a deal of artful and concealed satire in what Oenone throws out against Helen; and to speak truth, there was fair scope for it, and it might naturally be expected. Her chief design was to render his new mistress suspected of meretricious arts, and make him apprehensive that she would hereafter be as ready to leave him for some new gallant, as she had before, perfidiously to her lawful husband, followed him."

Sometimes contradictory: thus, "Style (says he) is used by some writers as synonymous with diction, yet, in my opinion, it has rather a complex sense, including both sentiment and diction." Oppose to this, page 135. "As to concord, and even style, they are acquirable by most youth

in due time, and by many with ease; but the art of thinking properly, and chusing the best sentiments on every subject, is what comes later."

And sometimes he is guilty of false criticism: as when he says, Ovid's chief excellence lies in description. Description was the rock on which he always split: "Nescivit quod bene cessit relinquere," as Seneca says of him: when once he embarks in description, he most commonly tires us before he has done with it. But to tire no longer the reader, or the translator, with extended censure; as a critic, this gentlemen seems to have drawn his knowledge from the remarks of others, and not his own reflection; as a translator, he understands the language of Ovid, but not his beauties; and though he may be an excellent schoolmaster, he has, however, no pretensions to taste.

XV.-SPENSER'S FAERIE QUEENE.

[From the Critical Review, 1759. "The Faerie Queene. By Edmund Spenser. A new Edition, with Notes, Critical and and Explanatory, by Ralph Church, M.A. late Student of Christ Church, Oxon. In four volumes, 8vo.]

'Tis the remark of Boccalini, that a writer whose works have passed through a number of editions after his decease, would hardly know his own performances again if he were to rise from the dead. Critics mistake his meaning, or are desirous of giving a new one of their own. Dunces interpolate the text, and printers, too, add their faults to swell the account: so that the poet at last, like a river which receives a new tincture from every soil through which it flows, makes a very different appearance from that with which he set out.