He has with exquisite skill selected only those rivers as attendants of Thames, who are his subjects, his tributaries, or neighbours. I cannot resist the pleasure of transcribing the passage:

First the fam'd authors of his ancient name,
The winding Isis, and the fruitful Tame:
The Kennet swift, for silver eels renown'd;
The Loddon slow, with verdant osiers crown'd;
Cole, whose dark streams his flowery islands lave;
And chalky Wey, that rolls a milky wave:
The blue transparent Vandalis appears ;
The gulphy Lee his sedgy tresses rears;
The sullen Mole, that hides his diving flood;
And silent Darent, stain'd with British blood.*

As I before produced a passage of Milton which I thought superior to a similar one of POPE, I shall, in order to preserve impartiality, produce another from Milton, in which I think him inferior to the last quoted passage; except, perhaps, in the third line; first remarking, that both authors are much indebted to Spenser,† and perhaps to Drayton.

Rivers, arise whether thou be the son

Of utmost Tweed, or Ouse, or gulphy Dun;

Or

* Ver. 339.

Fairy Queen, B. iv. C. 11.

Or Trent, who, like some earth-born giant, spreads
His thirty arms along th' indented meads;

Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath;
Or Severn swift, guilty of maiden's death ;
Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lee,

Or coaly Tine, or ancient hallow'd Dee;

Or Humber loud, that keeps the Scythian's name;
Or Medway smooth; or royal-tower'd Thame.*

The poets, both ancient and modern, are obliged to the rivers for some of their most striking descriptions. The Tiber and the Nile of Virgil, the Aufidus of Horace, the Sabrina of Milton, and the Scamander of Homer, are among their capital figures.

The influences and effects of peace, and its consequence, a diffusive commerce, are expressed by selecting such circumstances as are best adapted to strike the imagination by lively pictures; the selection of which chiefly constitutes true poetry. An historian, or prosewriter, might say, "Then shall the most distant nations croud into my port:" a poet sets before

* At a vacation exercise, &c. Ver. 91. Milton was now aged but nineteen.

before your eyes "the ships of uncouth form," that shall arrive in the Thames.*

And feather'd people croud my wealthy side;
And naked youths, and painted chiefs, admire
Our speech, our colour, and our strange attire.

And the benevolence and poetry of the succeeding wish are worthy admiration.

Till the freed Indians, in their native groves,
Reap their own fruits, and woo their sable loves;
Peru once more a race of kings behold,

And other Mexicos be roof'd with gold.†

The two epithets, native and sable, have peculiar elegance and force; and as Peru was particularly famous for its long succession of Incas, and Mexico for many magnificent works of massy gold, there is great propriety in fixing the restoration of the grandeur of each to that object for which each was once so remarkable.

The group of allegorical personages that succeeds the last mentioned lines, are worthy the

* Ver. 400. et seq.

+ Ver. 409.

the pencil of Rubens or Julio Romano: it may, perhaps, however, be wished that the epithets barbarous, (discord,) mad, (ambition,) hateful, (envy,)* had been particular and picturesque, instead of general and indiscriminating; though it may possibly be urged, that, in describing the dreadful inhabitants of the portal of hell, Virgil has not always used such adjuncts and epithets as a painter or statuary might work after; he says only ultrices CURE, mortiferum BELLUM, mala MENTIS GAUDIA ; particularly, malesuada is only applied to FAMES, instead of a word that might represent the meagre and ghastly figure intended. I make no scruple of adding, that in this famous

.

pas

sage, Virgil has exhibited no images so lively and distinct, as these living figures painted by POPE, each of them with their proper insignia and attributes:

-ENVY her own snakes shall feel,

And PERSECUTION mourn his broken wheel:
There FACTION roar, REBELLION bite her chain,
And gasping FURIES thirst for blood in vain †

A person

*Ver. 411. et seq.

+ Ver. 419. et seq.

A person of no small rank has informed me, that Mr. Addison was inexpressibly chagrined at this noble conclusion of WINDSORFOREST, both as a politician and as a poet. As a politician, because it so highly celebrated that treaty of peace which he deemed so pernicious to the liberties of Europe; and as a poet, because he was deeply conscious that his own CAMPAIGN, that gazette in rhyme, contained no strokes of such genuine and sublime poetry as the conclusion before us.

It is one of the greatest and most pleasing arts of descriptive poetry, to introduce moral sentences and instructions in an oblique and indirect manner, in places where one naturally expects only painting and amusement. We have virtue, as POPE remarks,* put upon us by surprize, and are pleased to find a thing where we should never have looked to meet with it. I must do a pleasing English poet the justice to observe, that it is this particular art

that

*Iliad. B. 16. in the notes: Ver. 465.