Pindaric variety to the numbers, that is wanting not only to the best French and Italian, but even to the best Latin odes. In the pieces here commended, the figures are strong, and the transitions bold, and there is a just mixture of sentiment and imagery; and particularly, they are animated with a noble spirit of liberty. I must refer the reader to the characters of Alcæus and of Milton in the two first, and to the stanza of Mr. West's Ode on the Barons procuring Magna Charta, which I shall insert at length. On yonder plain, Along whose willow-fringed side Down the smooth Thames amid the cygnets glide, I saw, when at thy reconciling word, Injustice, anarchy, intestine jar, Despotic insolence, the wasting sword, And all the brazen throats of civil war Were hush'd in peace; from this imperious throne Abash'd, dismay'd, Like a chas'd lion to the savage shade Of his own forests fell Oppression fled, With vengeance brooding in his sullen breast. While While round her valiant squadrons stood, The DEED OF FREEDOM purchas'd with their blood.* The next LYRIC compositions of POPE, are two choruses inserted in a very heavy tragedy altered from Shakespeare by the Duke of Buckingham; in which we see that the most accurate observation of dramatic rules without genius is of no effect. These choruses are extremely elegant and harmonious; but are they not chargeable with the fault which Aristotle imputes to many of Euripides, that they are foreign and adventitious to the subject, and contribute nothing towards the advancement of the main action? Whereas the chorus ought, Μοριον είναι τε όλες, και συναγωνίζεστ a," to be a part or member of the one Whole, co-operate with, and help to accelerate the in 66 F 3 * Dodsley's Miscellanies, vol. ii. page 152. same volume, an excellent ode of Mr. Cobb. of whose odes Pope took the following line; Thy stone, O Sisyphus, stands still. + Κεφ. την περι ποιητικής. tended See also in the From another 1 tended event; as is constantly, adds the philosopher, the practice of Sophocles. Whereas these reflections of POPE on the baneful influences of war, on the arts and learning, and on the universal power of love, seem to be too general, are not sufficiently appropriated, do not rise from the subject and occasion, and might be inserted with equal propriety in twenty other tragedies. This remark of Aristotle, though he does not himself produce any examples, may be verified from the following, among many others. Euripides, they sing a long and very beautiful, but ill-placed, hymn to Mars; I speak of that which begins so nobly, In the Phoenicians of Η πολυμόχθος Αξης, τι ποθ' αιμαλι Και θανατω καλέχη, Βρόμιε παραμεσος εορίαις;* "O, direful Mars! why art thou still delighted with blood and with death, and why an enemy to the feasts of Bacchus?" And a still more glaring instance may be brought from the end of the third act of the Troades, in which the * Ver. 793. the story of Ganymede is introduced not very artificially. To these may be added that exquisite ode in praise of Apollo, descriptive of his birth and victories, which we find in the Iphigenia in Tauris.† On the other hand, the choruses of Sophocles never desert the subject of 'each particular drama, and all their sentiments and reflections are drawn from the situation of the principal personage of the fable. Nay, Sophocles hath artfully found a method of making those poetical descriptions, with which the choruses of the ancients abound, carry on the chief design of the piece; and has by these means accomplished what is a great difficulty in writing tragedy, has united poetry with propriety. In the Philoctetes the chorus takes a natu F 4 * Ver. 795. + Ver 1235. et seq. ral The subject and scene of this tragedy, so romantic and uncommon, are highly pleasing to the imagination. See particularly his description of his being left in this desolate island, v. 280. His lamentation for the loss of his bow, v. 1140. and also 1185. and his last adieu to the island, 1508. One t ral occasion, at verse 694, to give a minute and moving picture of the solitary life of that unfortunate hero; and when afterwards, at verse 855, pain has totally exhausted the strength and spirits of Philoctetes, and it is necessary for the plot of the tragedy that he should fall asleep, it is then that the chorus breaks out into an exquisite ode to sleep. As in the Antigone, with equal beauty and decorum in an address to the god of love, at verse 791 of that play. And thus, lastly, when the birth of Edipus is doubtful, and his parents unknown, the chorus suddenly exclaims, "Ts σε, τεκνον, τις σ' έλικλε των μακραίωνων ; &c. From which, O my son, of the immortal gods, didst thou spring? Was it some nymph, a favourite of Pan, that haunts the mountains, or some daughter of Apollo, (for this god loves the remote rocks and caverns,) who bore you? Or was it Mercury, who reigns in Cyllene? or did Bac chus, One may here observe by the way, that the ancients thought bodily pains, and wounds, &c. proper objects to be represented on the stage. See also the Trachiniæ of Sophocles, and the lamentations of Hercules in it. |