What can atone (oh ever-injur'd fhade!) Thy fate unpity'd, and thy rites unpaid? No friend's complaint, no kind domeftic tear Pleas'd thy pale ghoft, or grac'd thy mournful bier, By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd, By foreign hands thy decent limbs compos'd, 51 By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd, By stangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd! To midnight dances, and the public show? NOTES. 55 grace, бо What VER. 59. What tho' no weeping Loves, &c.] This beautiful little Elegy had gained the unanimous admiration of all men of taste. When a Critic comes--But hold; to give his observation fair play, let us firft analize the Poem. The Ghoft of the injured perfon appears to excite the Poet to revenge her wrongs. He defcribes her Character-execrates the author of her misfortunesexpatiates on the feverity of her fate-the rites of fepulture denied her in a foreign land: Then follows, "What tho' no weeping Loves thy afhes grace," &c. "Yet fhall thy grave with rifing flowers be dreft," &c. Can any thing be more naturally pathetic? Yet the Critic tells us, He can give no quarter to this part of the poem, which is eminently, he fays, difcordant with the fubject, and not the language of the heart. But when he tells us, That it is to be afcribed to imitation, copying indifcreetly what has been faid by others, [Elements of Crit. vol. ii. p. 182.} his Criticism begins to smell furiously of old Johu Dennis. Well might our Poet's last wish be, to commit his writings to the candour of a fenfible and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every fhort-fighted and malevolent critic," WARBURTON. 65 What tho' no facred earth allow thee room, A heap of duft alone remains of thee, 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be! 74 Poets themselves muft fall like thofe they fung, Deaf the prais'd ear, and mute the tuneful tongue. Ev'n he, whose foul now melts in mournful lays, Shall shortly want the genʼrous tear he pays; Then from his clofing eyes thy form fhall part, And the last pang fhall tear thee from his heart, 80 Life's idle business at one gafp be o'er, The Mufe forgot, and thou belov'd no more! Johnfon fays, " Poetry has been feldom "worfe employed, than in dignifying the amorous fury of a raving girl." This feems fevere, contemptuous, and unfeeling Johnfon, however, chiefly adverted, I imagine, to the false reasoning, and abfurd attempt, in the lines, "Is there no bright," &c. to make fuicide the natu ral confequence of more elevated feelings. Johnson spoke as a fevere moralift, and a rigid philofopher, againft fuch contemptible reafoning, as Pope employs upon this fubject, from the 5th to the 22d verfe 22d verfe. Having been, as might naturally be expected from his fuperior understanding, disgusted with the reasoning part of the poem, the gentler touches of fancy and tenderness were loft, if I may fay fo, on him. He would turn with difdain from fuch images as "There shall the morn her earliest tears beftow ;" or perhaps exclaim, as upon another occafion, "Incredu'us odi." Notwithstanding, however, his severity, and the abfurd criticisms of Lord Kaims, which Warburton fpeaks of, the animated paffages of this poem, "But thou, false guardian," &c. and the lines of tenderness and poetic fancy interfperfed, cannot be read without fympathy. The verfes, " Yet fhall thy grave," &c. are poffibly too common place, but they are furely beautiful. If expreffion might be objected to, perhaps it would be "filver" for "white" wings of an angel. any PROLOGUE TO MR. ADDISON's TRAGEDY OF CATO. THE Tragedy of Cato itself, is a glaring instance of the force of party; fo fententious and declamatory a drama would never have met with fuch rapid and amazing fuccess, if every line and fentence had not been particularly tortured, and applied to recent events, and the reigning disputes of the times. The purity and energy of the diction, and the loftinefs of the fentiments, copied, in a great measure, from Lucan, Tacitus, and Seneca the philofopher, merit approbation. But I have always thought, that those pompous Roman fentiments are not fo difficult to be produced, as is vulgarly imagined; and which, indeed, dazzle only the vulgar. A ftroke of nature is, in my opinion, worth a hundred such thoughts as "When vice prevails, and impious men bear fway, The poft of honour is a private station.” Cato is a fine dialogue on liberty, and the love of one's country; but confidered as a dramatic performance, nay, as a model of a just tragedy, as fome have affectedly represented it, it must be owned to want action and pathos; the two hinges, I presume, on which a juft tragedy ought neceffarily to turn, and without which it cannot fubfift. It wants also character, although that be not so effentially neceffary to a tragedy as action. Syphax, indeed, in his interview with Juba, bears fome marks of a rough African; the fpeeches of the reft may be transferred to any of the perfonages concerned. The fimile drawn from Mount Atlas, and the description of the Numidian travellers fmothered in the defart, are indeed in character, but fufficiently obvious. How Addison could fall into the false and unnatural custom of ending his three first acts with fimilies, is amazing in so chaste and correct a writer, The loves of Juba and Marcia, of Portius and Lucia, are vicious and infipid episodes, debafe the dignity, and deftroy the unity of the fable. Cato was tranflated into Italian by Salvini; into Latin, and acted by the Jefuits at St. Omers; imitated in French by De Champs, and great part of it tranflated by the Abbé Du Bos. The Prologue to Addifon's Tragedy of Cato, is fuperior to any Prologue of Dryden ; who, notwithstanding, is fo juftly celebrated for this fpecies of writing. The Prologues of Dryden are fatirical and facetious; this of Pope is folemn and fublime, as the fubject required. Those of Dryden contain general topics of criticism and wit, and may precede any play whatsoever, even tragedy or comedy. This of Pope is particular, and appropriated to the tragedy alone, which it was defigned to introduce. WARTON, |