of POPE. It is not improbable, that this subject was suggested to our author, not only by Dryden's translations of Chaucer, of which POPE was so fond, but likewise by that celebrated paper of Addison, in the Tatler, called the Tables of Fame, to which the great worthies of antiquity are introduced, and seated according to their respective merits and characters; and which was published some years before this poem was written. Chaucer himself borrowed his description from Ovid, in the beginning of the twelfth book of his Metamorphoses, from whence he has closely copied the situation and formation of the edifice.

Orbe locus medio est inter terrasque fretumque,
Cœlestesque plagas, triplicis confinia mundi,
Unde quod est usquam, quamvis regionibus absit,
Inspicitur, penetratque cavas vox omnis ad aures.*

Ovid has introduced some allegorical personages, but has not distinguished them with any picturesque epithets :

Illic CREDULITAS, illic temerarius ERROR,
Vanaque LETITIA est, consternatique TIMORES,
SEDITIOQUE recens, dubioque auctore SUSURRI.* ›

Dryden translated this passage of Ovid: and POPE, who evidently formed himself upon Dryden, could not but have frequently read it with pleasure, particularly the following harmonious lines :

'Tis built of brass, the better to diffuse

The spreading sounds, and multiply the news;
Where echos in repeated echos play:

A mart for ever full, and open night and day.
Nor silence is within, nor voice express,
But a deaf noise of sounds that never cease,
+ Confus'd, and chiding, like the hollow roar
Of tides receding from th' insulted shore:
Or like the broken thunder heard from far,
When Jove to distance drives the rolling war.

It

* Ver. 59.

+ Confus'd, &c.

This is more poetically expressed than the same image in our author.

Sudden I heard a wild promiscuous sound,
Like broken thunders that at distance roar,
Or billows murm'ring on the hollow shore.

Dryden's

It is time to proceed to some remarks on particular passages of this Vision, which I shall do in the order in which they occur, not censuring or commending any, without a reason assigned.

1. Nor was the work impair'd by storms alone,
But felt th' approaches of too warm a sun;
For Fame, impatient of extremes, decays
Not more by envy, than excess of praise.

Does not this use of the heat of the sun appear to be a puerile and far-fetched conceit? What connection is there betwixt the two sorts of excesses here mentioned? My purpose in animadverting so frequently, as I have done, on this species of false thoughts, is to guard the reader, especially of the younger sort, from being betrayed by the authority of so correct a writer as POPE, into such specious and false ornaments

Z 3

Dryden's lines are superior to the original.

Qualia de pelagi, siquis procul audiat, undis
Esse solent, qualemve sonum, cum Jupiter atras
Increpuit nubes, extrema tonitrua reddunt.

B. xii. V. 50.

In this passage of Dryden are many instances of the alliteration, which he has managed beautifully.

naments of stile. For the same reason, the opposition of ideas in the three last words of the following line may be condemned.

And legislators seem to think in stone.*

2. So Zembla's rocks, the beauteous work of frost,
Rise white in air, and glitter o'er the coast;
Pale suns, unfelt, at distance roll away,
And on th' impassive ice the light'nings play;
Eternal snows the growing mass supply,

Till the bright mountains prop th' incumbent sky;
As Atlas fix'd each hoary pile appears,

The gather'd Winter of a thousand years.†

A real lover of painting will not be contented with a single view and examination of this beautiful winter-piece, but will return to it, again and again, with fresh delight. The images are distinct, and the epithets lively and appropriated, especially the words, pale, unfelt, impassive, incumbent, gathered.

3. There great Alcides, stooping with his toil,
Rests on his club, and holds the Hesperian spoil.§

* V. 74.

It

+ V. 53.

The reader may consult Thomson's WINTER, V. 905.

§ V. 81

It were to be wished, that our author, whose knowledge and taste of the fine arts were unquestionable, had taken more pains in describing so famous a statue as that of the Farnesian Hercules, to which he plainly refers; for he has omitted the characteristical excellencies of this famous piece of Grecian workmanship, namely, the uncommon breadth of the shoulders, the knottiness and spaciousness of the chest, the firmness and protuberance of the muscles in each limb, particularly the legs, and the majestic vastness of the whole figure, undoubtedly designed by the artist to give a full idea of STRENGTH, as the Venus de Medicis of BEAUTY. These were the "invicti membra Glyconis," which, it is probable, Horace proverbially alluded to in his first epistle. The name of Glycon is to this day preserved on the base of the figure, as the maker of it; and as the virtuosi, customarily in speaking of a picture, or statue, call it their RAPHAEL OF BERNINI, why should Z 4

* Luxuriatque toris animosum pectus.

not

Virg. Georg. lib. iii. ver. 81.

+ V. 30.