By those happy fouls who dwell Or Amaranthine bow'rs; By the heroes armed fhades, Glitt'ring through the gloomy glades; By the youths that dy'd for love, Wand'ring in the myrtle grove, Restore, restore Eurydice to life: Oh take the husband, or return the wife! He fung, and hell confented To hear the Poet's prayer: And gave him back the fair. Thus fong could prevail O'er death, and o'er hell, A conqueft how hard and how glorious! Tho' fate had fast bound her With Styx nine times round her Yet mufic and love were victorious. 75 80 85 90 But NOTES. VER. 77.] Thefe images are picturesque and appropriated, and are fuch notes as might, Draw iron tears down Pluto's cheek, And make hell grant what love did seek. Pope being infenfible of the effects of mufic, enquired of Dr. Arbuthnot whether Handel really deferved the applause he met with. The Dutchefs of Queensberry told me that Gay could play on the flute, and that this enabled him to adapt so happily fome airs in the Beggars Opera. VER. 83.] This measure is unfuited to the fubject. VER. 87.] Thefe numbers are of fo burlesque, so low, and ridiculous a kind, and have fo much the air of a vulgar drinking VI. But foon, too foon, the lover turns his eyes: 95 No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love. fong, that one is amazed and concerned to find them in a serious ode; and in an ode of a writer eminently skilled, in general, in accommodating his founds to his fentiments. Addison thought this measure exactly fuited to the comic character of Sir Trufty in his Rofamond, by the introduction of which he has fo ftrangely debafed that very elegant opera. It is obfervable that this ludicrous measure is used by Dryden, in a fong of evil spirits, in the fourth act of the State of Innocence. VER.97.] Thefe fcenes, in which Orpheus is introduced as making his lamentations, are not fo wild, fo favage, and difmal, as those mentioned by Virgil; and convey not fuch images of defolation and deep defpair, as the caverns on the banks of Strymon and Tanais, the Hyperborean deferts, and the Riphæan folitudes. And to fay of Hebrus, only, that it rolls in meanders, is flat and feeble, and does not heighten the melancholy of the place. He that would have a complete idea of Orpheus's anguish and fituation, muft look at the exquifite figure of him (now in the poffeffion of Sir Watkin Williams Wynne) painted by Mr. Dance, a work that does honor to the true genius of the artist, and to the age in which it was produced. Now Now with Furies furrounded, Despairing, confounded, He trembles, he glows, Amidst Rhodope's fnows; See, wild as the winds, o'er the defert he flies; 110 Hark! Haemus refounds with the Bacchanals cries Ah fee, he dies! Yet ev❜n in death Eurydice he fung, Eurydice still trembled on his tongue, Eurydice the woods, Eurydice the floods, Eurydice the rocks, and hollow mountains rung. VII. Mufic the fierceft grief can charm, And fate's feverest rage difarm: Mufic can foften pain to ease, And make despair and madness please: Our joys below it can improve, And antedate the blifs above. NOTES. 115 120 VER. 108.] I am afraid there is a trivial antithefis in these lines betwixt the words Snows and glows, unworthy our author. VER. 112.] The death is expreffed with a brevity and abruptness suitable to the nature of the ode. Inftead of he fung, Virgil fays, vocabat, which is more natural and tender, and adds a moving epithet, that he called miferam Eurydicen. The repetition of Eurydice in two very short lines hurts the ear, which Virgil escaped by interpofing several other words; and the name itself happens not to be harmonious enough to suffer such repetition. VER. 118. Mufic the fierceft] This is fuch a clofe repetition of the subject of the second stanza, that it must be thought a blameable tautology. L 4 This This the divine Cecilia found, And to her Maker's praise confin'd the found. 126 Th' immortal pow'rs incline their ear; Borne on the fwelling notes our fouls afpire, While folemn airs improve the facred fire; And Angels lean from heav'n to hear. Of Orpheus now no more let Poéts tell, To bright Cecilia greater pow'r is giv'n; His numbers rais'd a fhade from hell, Her's lift the foul to heav'n. 130 NOTES, VER, 131. It is obfervable that this ode, as well as that of Dryden, concludes with an epigram of four lines; a fpecies of witty writing as flagrantly unfuitable to the dignity, and as foreign to the nature of the lyric, as it is of the epic müfe. IF we caft a tranfient view over the moft celebrated of the modern lyrics, we may obferve that the ftanza of Petrarch, which has been adopted by all his fucceffors, difpleases the ear, by its tedious uniformity, and by the number of identical cadences. And, indeed, to speak truth, there appears to be little valuable in Petrarch, except the purity of his diction. His fentiments, even of love, are metaphyfical and far-fetched. Neither is there much variety in his fubjects, or fancy in his method of treating them. Fulvio Tefli, Chiabrera, and Metaftafio, are much better lyric poets. When Boileau attempted an ode, he exhibited a glaring proof of what will frequently be hinted in the course of thefe notes, that the writer, whofe grand characteristical talent is fatiric or moral poetry, will never fucceed, with equal merit, in the higher branches of his art. In his ode on the taking Namur, are inftances of the bombaftic, of the profaic, and of the puerile; and it is no fmall confirmation of the ruling paffion of this author, that he could not conclude his ode, but with a fevere stroke on his old old antagonist Perrault, though the majefty of this fpecies of compofition is so much injured by defcending to perfonal fatire. The name of Malherbe is refpectable, as he was the first reformer of the French poefy, and the first who gave his countrymen any idea of a legitimate ode, though his own pieces have hardly any thing but harmony to recommend them. The odes of La Motte, though so highly praised by Sanadon, and by Fontenelle, are fuller of delicate fentiment, and philofophical reflection, than of imagery, figures, and poetry. There are particular ftanzas eminently good, but not one intire ode. Some of Rouffeau's, particularly that to Fortune, and some of his Pfalms; and one or two of Voltaire's, particularly, to the King of Pruffia on his acceffion to the throne, and on Maeupertuis's travels to the North, to measure the degrees of the meridian toward the equator, seem to rife above that exact mediocrity which distinguishes the lyric poetry of the French. "We have had (fays Mr. Gray) in our language, no other odes of the fublime kind, than that of Dryden on St. Cecilia's Day: for Cowley, who had his merit, yet wanted judgment, style, and harmony, for such a task. That of Pope is hot worthy of fo great a master. Mr. Mafon, indeed of late days, has touched the true chords, and with a masterly hand, in fome of his choruses; above all in the last of Caractacus ; "Hark! heard ye not yon footstep dread?" &c. Gray's Works, 4to. page 25. |