Be kind and courteous to this gentleman; And pluck the wings from painted butterflies, If it should be thought, that Shakespeare has the merit of being the first who assigned proper employments to imaginary persons in the foregoing lines, yet it must be granted, that by the addition of the most delicate satire to the most lively fancy, POPE, in the following passage, has excelled any thing in Shakespeare, or perhaps in any other author. Our humbler province is to tend the fair; To draw fresh colours from the vernal flow'rs, * Cant. ii. ver. 91. The The seeming importance given to every part of female dress, each of which is committed to the care and protection of a different sylph, with all the solemnity of a general appointing the several posts in his army, renders the following passage admirable, on account of its politeness, poignancy, and poetry. Haste then, ye spirits, to your charge repair; The celebrated raillery of Addison on the hooppetticoat, has nothing equal to the following circumstance; which marks the difficulty of guarding a part of dress of such high consequence. To fifty chosen sylphs, of special note, We trust th' important charge, the PETTICOAT: And guard the wide circumference around.+ VOL. I. *Cant. ii. ver. 111. + Cant. ver. 117. RIDET RIDET HOC, INQUAM, VENUS IPSA; RIDENT Our poet still rises in the delicacy of his satire, where he employs, with the utmost judgment and elegance, all the implements and furniture of the toilette, as instruments of punishment to those spirits who shall be careless of their charge: of punishment such as sylphs alone could undergo. Each of the delinquents Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins; Or plung'd in lakes of bitter washes lie ; If Virgil has merited such perpetual commendadation for exalting his bees by the majesty and magnificence *Cant. ii. ver. 125. magnificence of his diction, does not POPE deserve equal praises for the pomp and lustre of his language on so trivial a subject? The same mastery of language appears in the lively and elegant description of the game at Ombre, which is certainly imitated from the Scacchia of Vida, and as certainly equal to it, if not superior. Both of them have elevated and enlivened their subjects, by such similies as the epic poets use; but as Chess is a play of a far higher order than Ombre, POPE had a more difficult task than Vida, to raise this his inferior subject into equal dignity and gracefulness. Here again our poet artfully introduces his machinery : Soon as she spreads her hand, th' aërial guard The majesty with which the kings of spades and clubs, and the knaves of diamonds and clubs, are spoken of, is very amusing to the imaginaQ 2 tion : * Cant. iii. ver. 31. tion and the whole game is conducted with : great art and judgment. I question whether Hoyle could have played it better than Belinda. It is finely contrived that she should be victorious; as it occasions a change of fortune in the dreadful loss she was speedily to undergo, and gives occasion to the poet to introduce a moral reflection from Virgil, which adds to the pleasantry of the story. In one of the passages where POPE has copied Vida, he has lost the propriety of the original, which arises from the different colours of the men at Chess. Thus, when dispers'd a routed army runs, &c.* Non aliter, campis legio se buxea utrinque To this scene succeeds the tea-table. It is, doubtless, as hard to make a coffee-pot shine in poetry as a plough yet POPE has succeeded in giving * Cant. iii. ver. 81. † Vida Scacchia Ludus, ver. 74, &c. |