over Gaul-Gallias Cæsar subegit, etc. as it is recorded by Suetonius in Julio, and so derive its original from the ancient Gauls to the modern French : but this is erroneous; the words there not being ranged according to the laws of the Rondeau, as laid Where each ōld po|ētic | mountain | The only difference is that the insertion of rhyme in the English measure breaks the one line into two; but the metre remains, notwithstanding, intrinsically the same. We have also Anacreontic measures-consisting of three pure Iambics, and one semiped Ŏ softly gliding num | bers That woō to gēn | tlě slūm | bers Θέλω | λεγεῖν | Ατρεῖ | δας Θέλω | δε Καδ | μον ᾗ [ δειν And that exquisite Ode in Shakspeare sung by Ariel, Where the Bee sucks | there sŭck | I, On a Bat's back I do fly, precisely corresponds with the metre of the following lines in Horace, Tū să căndă❘ mārmŏ | ra | We have also Anapæstic verses in our metre— And the King | sĕiz'd ǎ flam | beau with zeal | to děstrōy | A line that contains four Anapests, making twelve syllables and four feet. We are always to remember that our feet are regulated by accent, not by quantity, down by Clement Marot. If you will say, that the song of the soldiers might be only the rude beginning of this kind of poem, and so consequently imperfect, neither Heinsius nor I can be of that opinion; and so I conclude, that we know nothing of the matter. But, Sir, I ask your pardon for all this buffoonery, which I could not address to any one so well as to you, since I have found by experience, you most easily forgive my impertinencies. 'Tis only to show you that I am mindful of you at all times, that I write at all times; and as nothing I can say can be worth your reading, so I may as well throw out what comes uppermost, as study to be dull. I am, etc. LETTER XV. FROM MR. CROMWELL. July 15, 1710. Ar last I have prevailed over a lazy humour to transcribe this elegy: I have changed the situation of some of the Latin verses, and made some interpolations, but I hope they are not absurd, and foreign to my author's sense and manner: but they are referred to your censure, as a debt: whom I esteem no less a critic than a poet: I expect to be treated with the same rigour as I have practised to Mr. Dryden and you. Hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim. I desire the favour of your opinion why Priam, in his speech to Pyrrhus in the second Æneid, says this to him, At non ille, satum quo te mentiris, Achilles. He would intimate (I fancy by Pyrrhus's answer) only his degeneracy: but then these following lines. of the version (I suppose from Homer's history) seem absurd in the mouth of Priam, viz. He cheer'd my sorrows, and for sums of gold I am, Your, etc. LETTER XVI. July 20, 1710. I GIVE you thanks for the version you sent me of Ovid's elegy. It is very much an image of that author's writing, who has an agreeableness that charms us without correctness, like a mistress, whose faults we see, but love her with them all. You have very judiciously altered his method in some places, and I can find nothing which I dare insist upon as an error: what I have written in the margins being merely guesses at a little improvement, rather than criticisms. I assure you I do not expect you should subscribe to my private notions, but when you shall judge them agreeable to reason and good sense. What I have done is not as a critic, but as a friend; I know too well how many qualities are requisite to make the one, and that I want almost all I can reckon up; but I am sure I do not want inclination, nor, Í hope, capacity, to be the other. Nor shall I take it at all amiss, that another dissents from my opinion: 'tis no more than I have often done from my own; and indeed, the more a man advances in understanding, he becomes the more every day a critic upon himself, and finds something or other still to blame in his former notions and opinions. I could be glad to know if you have translated the 11th elegy of lib. ii. Ad amicam navigantem. The 8th of book iii. or the 11th of book iii. which are above all others my particular favourites, especially the last of these. As to the passage of which you ask my opinion in the second Æneid, it is either so plain as to require no solution; or else (which is very probable) you see farther into it than I can. Priam would say, that "Achilles (whom surely you only feign to be your father, since your actions are so different from his) did not use me thus inhumanly. He blushed at his murder of Hector, when he saw my sorrows for him; and restored his dead body to me to be buried." To this the answer of Pyrrhus seems to be agreeable enough. "Go then to the shades, and tell Achilles how I degenerate from him:" granting the truth of what Priam had said of the difference between them. Indeed Mr. Dryden's mentioning here what Virgil more judiciously passes in silence, the circumstance of Achilles's selling for money the body of Hector, This behaviour of Achilles could not escape an acute critic, but one too fond of carping at the ancients. "Forgive me (says Achilles), my dear Patroclus, for restoring the body of Hector to seems not so proper; it in some measure lessening the character of Achilles's generosity and piety, which is the very point of which Priam endeavours in this place to convince his son, and to reproach him with the want of. But the truth of this circumstance is no way to be questioned, being expressly taken from Homer, who represents Achilles weeping for Priam, yet receiving the gold, Iliad xxiv. For when he gives the body, he uses these words: "O my friend Patroclus! forgive me that I quit the corpse of him who killed thee; I have great gifts in ransom for it, which I will bestow upon thy funeral." LETTER XVII. I am, etc. FROM MR. CROMWELL Aug. 5, 1710. LOOKING among some French rhymes, I was agreeably surprised to find in the Rondeau of Pour le moins-your Apoticaire and Lavement, which I took for your own; so much is your Muse of intelligence with the wits of all languages. You have re his father; car (on s'attend qu'il va dire) je n'ai pû resister aux larmes de ce pere infortuné; mais non: for he has brought me a great ransom. Such passages prove that true heroism was never so little known, as in the times called heroic." Marmontel. Poetique, t. ii. p. 197. The plain answer is, that Achilles speaks and behaves suitably to the manners, ideas, and sentiments of his age. In Voiture's Poems. P. |