ble; and in giving the first specimen of that harmony in English verse, which is now become indispensably necessary, and which has so forcibly and universally influenced the public ear, as to have rendered every moderate rhymer melodious. POPE lengthened the abruptness of Waller, and at the same time contracted the exuberance of Dryden.

I remember to have been informed, by an intimate friend of POPE, that he had once laid a design of writing AMERICAN ECLOGUES. The subject would have been fruitful of the most poetical imagery; and, if properly executed, would have rescued the author from the accusation here urged, of having written Eclogues without invention.

Our author, who had received an early tincture of religion, a reverence for which he preserved to the last, was, with justice, convinced, that the Scriptures of God contained not only the purest precepts of morality, but the most elevated and sublime strokes of genuine poesy; strokes as much superior to any thing Heathenism

1

can

can produce, as is Jehovah to Jupiter. This is the case more particularly in the exalted prophecy of Isaiah, which POPE has so successfully versified in an Eclogue, that incontestably surpasses the Pollio of Virgil: although, perhaps, the dignity, the energy, and the simplicity, of the original, are in a few passages weakened and diminished by florid epithets, and useless circumlocutions.

See, Nature hastes her earliest wreaths to bring,
With all the incense of the breathing spring,*

are lines which have too much prettiness, and too modern an air. The judicious addition of circumstances and adjuncts, is what renders poesy a more lively imitation of nature than prose. POPE has been happy in introducing the following circumstance: the prophet says, "The parched ground shall become a pool :" Our author expresses this idea by saying, that the shepherd

-shall START amid the thirsty wild to hear
New falls of water murmuring in his ear.†

A striking

* MESS. v. 23.

† v. 69.

A striking example of a similar beauty may be added from Thomson. Melisander, in the Tragedy of AGAMEMNON, after telling us he was conveyed in a vessel, at midnight, to the wildest of the Cyclades, adds, when the pitiless mariners had left him in that dreadful solitude,

ral.

I never heard

A sound so dismal as their parting oars!

On the other hand, the prophet has been sometimes particular, when POPE has been only gene"Lift up thine eyes round about, and see; all they gather themselves together, they come to thee:The multitude of CAMELS shall cover thee: the DROMEDARIES of Midian and Ephah : all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense, and they shall shew forth the praises of the Lord. All the FLOCKS of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee; the RAMS of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee."* In imitating this passage, POPE has omitted the different beasts that in so picturesque a manner characterize the different countries which were to be gathered to

gether

Isaiah, c. lx. v. 4, 6, 7,

gether on this important event, and says only,

in undistinguishing terms,

See, barbarous nations at thy gates attend,
Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend:
See thy bright altars throng'd with prostrate kings,
And heap'd with products of Sabæan springs.*

As prosperity and happiness are described in this Eclogue by a combination of the most pleasing and agreeable objects, so misery and destruction are as forcibly delineated in the same Isaiah, by the circumstances of distress and desolation, that were to attend the fall of that magnificent city, Babylon and the latter is, perhaps, a more proper and interesting subject for poetry than the former; as such kinds of objects make the deepest impression on the mind; terror being a stronger sensation than joy. Accordingly, a noble ode on the destruction of Babylon, taken from the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah, has been written by Dr. Lowth; whose Latin prelections on the inimitable poesy of the Hebrews, abounding in remarks

* Ver. 91.

marks entirely new, delivered in the purest and most expressive language, are the richest augmentation literature has lately received; and from which the following passage, gradually unfolding the singular beauties of this prophecy, is here closely, though faintly, translated, and inserted as a pattern of just criticism.

The prophet having predicted the deliverance of the Jews, and their return into their own country from their rigorous Babylonish captivity, instantly introduces them singing a triumphal song on the fall of the king of Babylon; a song abounding in the most splendid images, and carried on by perpetual, and those very beautiful, personifications. The song begins with a sudden exclamation of the Jews, expressing their joy and wonder at the unexpected change of their condition, and death of the tyrant. Earth with her inhabitants triumphs; the firs and cedars of Libanus, under which images the allegoric style frequently shadows the kings and princes of the Gentiles, rejoice, and insult with reproaches, the broken power of their most implacable foe.

She