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perhaps, one of the most elegant and happy applications that ever was taken from any classic :

O suavis anima! qualem te dicam bonam
Antehac fuisse, tales cum sint reliquiæ!*

The versification of this translation of POPE is, in point of melody, next to that of his Pastorals. Perhaps the two following lines, in which alliteration is successfully used, are the most harmonious verses in our language; I mean in rhyme :

Ye gentle gales! beneath my body blow,
And softly lay me on the waves below!

The peculiar musicalness of the first of these lines, in particular, arises principally from its consisting entirely of iambic feet, which have always a striking, although unperceived, effect in an English verse. As for example;

Yĕ gēntlě gāles beneath my body blōw.

VOL. I.

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Phædr. Fab. L. iii. Fab. i. ver. 5, 6.

Even

Even if the last foot alone be an iambic, it casts a harmony over a whole line :*

Rapt into future times the bard begun.

There are many niceties in our versification, which few attend to, and which would demand a regular treatise fully to discuss we should surely use every possible art to render our rough Northern language harmonious.

FENTON also has given us a translation of this epistle to Phaon, but it is in no respect equal to POPE's: he has added another, of his own invention, of Phaon to Sappho, in which the story of the transformation of the former, from an old mariner to a beautiful youth, is well told. Fenton † was an elegant scholar, and had an exqui

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* See WARTON on Spenser, Sect. xi.
page 259, &c.
constantly studied this beauty.

Milton

+ POPE highly valued him. In a letter to Gay, Vol. VIII. p. 169, he says, "I have just received the news of the death of a friend, whom I esteemed almost as many years as you; poor Fenton. He died at East-Hamstead, of indolence and inactivity let it not be your fate, but use exercise." Craggs,

who

site taste the books he translated for POPE in the Odyssey, are superior to Broome's. In his Miscellanies are many pieces worthy notice; particularly, his Epistle to Southerne; the Fair Nun, imitated from Fontaine; Olivia, a Character; an Ode to the Sun, and one to Lord Gower, written in the true spirit of Lyric poetry, of which the following allegory is an example:

Enamour'd of the SEINE, celestial fair,

The blooming pride of Thetis azure train,
Bacchus, to win the nymph who caus'd his care,
Lash'd his swift tigers to the Celtic plain;

There secret in her sapphire cell,
He with the Nais wont to dwell,
Leaving the nectar'd feasts of Jove;
And where her mazy waters flow,
He gave the mantling vine to grow,
A trophy to his love.

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who had never received a learned education, had some time before commissioned POPE to find out for him some polite scholar, whom he proposed to take into his family, that he might acquire a taste of literature, by the conversation and instruction of the person POPE should recommend. He accordingly chose Fenton, who, at that time, was an assistant in a school at Seven Oaks, in Kent; but Craggs died unluckily for the execution of this scheme. Mr. Craggs had the candor to make no objection to Fenton, though he was a nonjuror; being, I presume, convinced he was honest as well as learned.

His tragedy of Mariamne * has undoubtedly merit, though the diction be too figurative and ornamental; it does, indeed, superabound in the richest poetic images: except this may be palliated by urging, that it suits the characters of oriental heroes, to talk in so high a strain, and to use such a luxuriance of metaphors.

From this EPISTLE of Sappho, I may take occasion to observe, that this species of writing, beautiful as it is, has not been much cultivated among us. Drayton, no despicable genius, attempted to revive it, and has left us some good subjects, though not very artfully handled.† We

have

* Pope thought highly of the style of Mariamne; and used to say it was one of the best written tragedies we had; and that the dialogue was particularly good. Our author himself attempted a tragedy on the story of TIMOLEON; but not satisfying himself, laid it aside. Pope told Mr. Harte, that Fenton's Epistle to Lambard was the most Horatian epistle in our language. "I envy Fenton (said he) that Epistle." His own admirable imitations had not yet appeared. Those books of the Odyssey, which Fenton translated for our author, were the 1, 4, 19, 20. Those which Broome translated, were the 2, 6, 8, 11, 12, 16, 18, 23. The remaining books our author himself translated.

+ The best of his ENGLAND'S HEROICAL EPISTLES, are King John to Matilda, Elinor Cobham to Duke Humphry, William

have also a few of this sort of epistles by the late Lord Hervey, in the fourth volume of Dodsley's Miscellanies,* Flora to Pompey,† Arisbe to Marius, and Monimia to Philocles; in which last are some pathetic strokes; and Roxana to Usbeck, taken from the incomparable ‡ Letters of the late president Montesquieu; a fine original

work, in which the customs and manners of the Persians are painted with the utmost truth and liveliness, and which have been faintly imitated by the Jewish, Chinese, and other letters. The beauty of this writer is his expressive brevity, which

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De la Pole to Queen Margaret, Jane Shore to Edward IV. Lord Surrey to Geraldine, and Lady Jane Grey to Lord Guildford Dudley. In his BARONS' WARS, there are many strokes not unworthy of Spenser; and his Nymphidia must be allowed to be a perfect pattern of pastoral elegance.

* Page 90. & seq.

Taken from Fontenelle.

Lettres Persanes. A Genève, 1716.

Lady Wortley Montague, who resided so long at Constantinople, said, "One would have thought the Baron de Montesquieu had been born and bred a Turk, he has described that people, and the women particularly, so very accurately." "I had rather have written (said a man of wit) the short history of the Troglodites, consisting only of ten pages, than the admirable, the immortal history of Thuanus in ten great vo'lumes."

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