ness in the proportion. A man cannot tell whether Apelles or Albert Durer were the more trifler whereof the one would make a personage by geometrical proportions; the other, by taking the best parts out of divers faces, to make one excellent. Such personages, I think, would please nobody, but the painter that made them. Not but I think, a painter may make a better face than ever was; but he must do it by a kind of felicity, as a musician that maketh an excellent ayre in music, and not by rule. A man shall see faces, that, if you examine them, part by part, you shall find never a good one; and yet altogether doe well."*

12. Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take,

May boldly deviate from the common track;
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,

And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,
Which, without passing thro' the judgment, gains.
The heart, and all its ends at once obtains.†

Here

* Essay xliii. On BEAUTY.

Ver. 150. These lines were thus printed in Dr. Warburton's quarto edition, 1743, page 16; and again in the octave edition made use of in this work, 1752.

Here is evidently a blameable mixture of metaphors, where the attributes of the horse and the writer are confounded. The former may justly be said to "take a nearer way, and to deviate from a track;" but how can a horse "snatch a grace," or "gain the heart?"

13. Some figures monstrous and mishap'd appear,
Consider'd singly, or beheld too near,

Which, but proportion'd to their light, or place,
Due distance reconciles to form and grace. *

By this excellent observation, delivered in a beautiful metaphor, all the faults imputed to Homer may be justified. Those who censure what is called the GROSSNESS of some of his images, may please to attend to the following remark of a writer, by no means prejudiced in favour of the ancients. "Quant a ce qu'on appelle GROSSIERETE dans les héros d'Homére, on peut rire tant qu'on voudra de voir Patrocle, au neuviéme livre de l'Iliade, mettre trois gigots de mouton dans une marmite, allumer et souffler le feu, et préparer le diner avec Achille: Achille et Patrocle

n'en sont pas moins éclatans. Charles XII. Roi de Suéde, a fait six mois sa cuisine a Demir-Tocca, sans perdre rien de son heroisme; et la plupart de nos generaux qui portent dans une campe tout. le luxe d'une cour effeminée, auront bien de la pein a egaler ces heros, qui faisoient leur cuisine En un mot, Homere avoit a representer un Ajax et un Hector; non un courtisan de Versailles, ou de Saint James."*

eux-memes.

14. A prudent chief not always must display
His pow'rs in equal rank, aud fair array.†

The same may be said of music: concerning which, a discerning judge has lately made the following observation. "I do not mean to affirm, that in this extensive work (of Marcello) every recitative, air, or chorus, is of equal excellence. A continued elevation of this kind no author ever came up to. Nay, if we consider that variety, which in all arts is necessary to keep up attention, we may, perhaps, affirm, with truth,

that

Voltaire, Essay sur la Poesie Epique. Les Oeuvres, Tom. ii. pag. 354, 355. This Essay is very different from what formerly appeared in England.

+ Ver. 175.

that INEQUALITY makes a part of the character of excellence; that something ought to be thrown into shades, in order to make the lights more striking. And, in this respect, Marcello is truly excellent: if ever he seems to FALL, it is only to RISE with more astonishing majesty and greatmay be pertinent to subjoin Roscom

ness.

"* It

mon's remark on the same subject,

Far the greatest part

Of what some call neglect, is study'd art.
When Virgil seems to trifle in a line,
'Tis but a warning-piece, which gives the sign
To wake your fancy, and prepare your sight
To reach the noble height of some unusual flight.t

15. Hail bards triumphant born in happier days.

Doctor Warburton is of opinion, that "there is a pleasantry in this title, which alludes to the state of WARFARE that all true genius must undergo while here on earth." Is not this interpretation of the word triumphant very far-fetched, and foreign to the author's meaning? who, I conceive,

K 3

* Avison's Essay on Musical Expression, edit. ii. page 103.

Essay on Transl. Verse.

* Ver. 189.

conceive, used the word to denote merely the TRIUMPH which arose from superiority:

16. The last, the meanest of your sons inspire.*

"This word last, (says the same commentator,) spoken in his early youth, as it were by chance, seems to have been OMINOUS. I am not persuaded that all true genius died with POPE: for one would be tempted to think, that the Seasons of Thomson, the Leonidas of Glover, the Pleasures of Imagination and the Odes of Akenside, the Night-Thoughts of Young, the Elegy of Gray, and Ode on Eton College, the truly pathetic Monody on Lady Lyttelton, together with many Pieces in Dodsley's Miscellanies, were not published when Dr. Warburton delivered this insinuation of a failure of poetical abilities.

17. So pleas'd at first the tow'ring Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
But, those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way;

* Ver. 196.

Th'