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This tranflation is in fome parts well executed, but in general it is deficient in poetic harmony and effect, and often offends taste and propriety. If Pope has here and there offended, by detailing a great idea, his Tranflator exceeds him in this refpect. It is not fufficient that Lebanon fhould "advance his head," but he is made to " leap up," friking the ftars with his nearer top. Emicat en Libanus propiore cacumine pulfans

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This is doing to Pope, exactly what he has done, in some paffages, to the awful fublimity of Ifaiah. I do not however speak this in difpraise; for, all things confidered, the Meffiah is as fine and masterly a piece of compofition, as the English language, in the fame ftyle of verse, can boast. I have ventured to point out a paffage or two, (for they are rare,) where the fublimity has been weakened by epithets; and I have done this, because it is a fault, particularly with young writers, fo common. In the most truly fublime images of fcripture, the addition of a fing'e word would often deftroy their effect. It is therefore right to keep as nearly as poffible to the very words. No one understood better than Milton, where to be general, and where particular; where to adopt the very expreffion of fcripture, and where it was allowed to para. phrafe,

WINDSOR FOREST.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

GEORGE LORD LANSDOWN.

Non injuffa cano: Te noftræ, Vare, myricæ,

Te Nemus omne canet; nec Phœbo gratior ulla eft,
Quam fibi quæ Vari præfcripfit pagina nomen.

VIRG.

WINDSOR-FOREST.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

GEORGE LORD LANSDOWN."

THY forest, Windfor! and thy green retreats,
At once the Monarch's and the Mufe's feats,
Invite my lays. Be prefent, fylvan maids!

all your fhades.

Unlock your springs, and open

VARIATIONS.

GRAN

VER. 3, &c. Originally thus (and indeed much better):

Chalte Goddess of the woods,

Nymphs of the vales, and Naïads of the floods,

Lead me through arching bow'rs, and glimm'ring glades,
Unlock your fprings-

NOTES.

POPE.

This Poem was written at two different times: the first part of it, which relates to the country, in the year 1704, at the same time with the Paftorals; the latter part was not added till the year 1713, in which it was published.

a

P.

Notwithstanding the many praises lavished on this celebrated nobleman as a poet, by Dryden, by Addison, by Bolingbroke, by our Author, and others, yet candid criticism muft oblige us to confefs, that he was but a feeble imitator of the feebleft parts of Waller. In his tragedy of Heroic Love, he seems not to have had a true relifh for Homer whom he copied; and in the British Enchanters, very little fancy is to be found in a subject fraitful of romantic imagery. It was fortunate for him, fays Mr. Walpole in his Anecdotes, that in an age when perfecution raged so fiercely against lukewarm authors, that he had an intimacy with the Inquifitor General; how elfe would fuch lines as these escape the Bathos; they are in his Heroic Love:

-Why thy Gods

Enlighten thee to speak their dark decrees.

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