the envious and ill-natured of gratifying their malignity, that some have thought it necessary to recommend the virtue of candour without restriction, and to preclude all future liberty of censure. Writers possessed with this opinion are continually enforcing civility and decency, recommending to criticks the proper diffidence of themselves, and inculcating the veneration due to celebrated

names.

I am not of opinion that these professed enemies of arrogance and severity have much more benevolence or modesty than the rest of mankind; or that they feel in their own hearts, any other intention than to distinguish themselves by their softness and delicacy. Some are modest because they are timorous, and some are lavish of praise because they hope to be repaid.

There is, indeed, some tenderness due to living writers, when they attack none of those truths which are of importance to the happiness of mankind, and have committed no other offence than that of betraying their own ignorance, or dulness. I should think it cruelty to crush an insect which had provoked me only by buzzing in my ear; and would not willingly interrupt the dream of harmless stupidity, or destroy the jest which makes its author laugh. Yet I am far from thinking this tenderness universally necessary; for he that writes may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom every one has a right to attack; since he quits the common rank of life, steps forward beyond the lists, and offers his merit to the publick judgment. To commence author is to claim praise, and no man can justly aspire to honour, but at the hazard of disgrace.

But whatever be decided concerning contemporaries, whom he that knows the treachery of the human heart, and considers how often we gratify our own pride or envy under the appearance of contending for elegance and propriety, will find himself not much inclined to disturb; there can surely be no exemptions pleaded to secure them from criticism, who can no longer suffer by reproach, and of whom nothing now remains but their writings and their

names. Upon these authors the critick is undoubtedly at full liberty to exercise the strictest severity, since he endangers only his own fame, and, like Æneas, when he drew his sword in the infernal regions, encounters phantoms which cannot be wounded. He may, indeed, pay some regard to established reputation; but he can by that show of reverence consult only his own security, for all other motives are now at an end.

The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive; and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority.

It has, indeed, been advanced by Addison, as one of the characteristicks of a true critick, that he points out beauties rather than faults. But it is rather natural to a man of learning and genius to apply himself chiefly to the study of writers who have more beauties than faults to be displayed for the duty of criticism is neither to depreciate, nor dignify by partial representations, but to hold out the light of reason, whatever it may discover; and to promulgate the determinations of truth, whatever she shall dictate.

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THE resemblance of poetick numbers to the subject which they mention or describe, may be considered as general or particular; as consisting in the flow and structure of a whole passage taken together, or as comprised in the sound

of some emphatical and descriptive words, or in the cadence and harmony of single verses.

The general resemblance of the sound to the sense is to be found in every language which admits of poetry, in every author whose force of fancy enables him to impress images strongly on his own mind, and whose choice and variety of language readily supply him with just representations. To such a writer it is natural to change his measure with his subject, even without any effort of the understanding, or intervention of the judgment. To revolve jollity and mirth necessarily tunes the voice of a poet to gay and sprightly notes, as it fires his eye with vivacity; and reflection on gloomy situations and disastrous events, will sadden his numbers as it will cloud his countenance, But in such passages there is only the similitude of pleasure to pleasure, and of grief to grief, without any immediate application to particular images. The same flow of joyous versification will celebrate the jollity of marriage, and the exultation of triumph; and the same languor of melody will suit the complaints of an absent lover, as of a conquered king.

It is scarcely to be doubted, that on many occasions we make the musick which we imagine ourselves to hear, that we modulate the poem by our own disposition, and ascribe to the numbers the effects of the sense. We may observe in life, that it is not easy to deliver a pleasing message in an unpleasing manner, and that we readily associate beauty and deformity with those whom for any reason we love or hate. Yet it would be too daring to declare that all the celebrated adaptations of harmony are chimerical; that Homer had no extraordinary attention to the melody of his verse when he described a nuptial festivity:

Νύμφας δ ̓ ἐκ θαλάμων, δαίδων ὑπολαμπομενάων,
Η γίνεον ἀνὰ ἄστυ, πολὺς δ ̓ ὑμέναιος ορώρει.

Here sacred pomp and genial feast delight,
And solemn dance, and hymeneal rite;
Along the street the new-made brides are led,
With torches flaming to the nuptial bed;
The youthful dancers, in a circle, bound
To the soft flute, and cittern's silver sound.

Pork.

That Vida was merely fanciful, when he supposed Virgil endeavouring to represent, by uncommon sweetness of numbers, the adventitious beauty of Æneas:

Os, humerosque Deo similis: namque ipse decoram
Cæsariem nato genetrix, lumenque juventa
Purpureum, et lætos oculis afflárat honores.

The Trojan chief appeared in open sight,
August in visage, and serenely bright.

His mother goddess, with her hands divine,

Had form'd his curling locks, and made his temples shine;

And giv'n his rolling eyes a sparkling grace,

And breath'd a youthful vigour on his face.

DRYDEN.

Or that Milton did not intend to exemplify the harmony which he mentions:

Fountains! and ye that warble as ye flow,

Melodious murmurs! warbling tune his praise.

That Milton understood the force of sounds well-adjusted, and knew the compass and variety of the ancient measures, cannot be doubted; since he was both a musician and a critick; but he seems to have considered these conformities of cadence, as either not often attainable in our language, or as petty excellencies, unworthy of his ambition for it will not be found that he has always assigned the same cast of numbers to the same objects. He has given in two passages very minute descriptions of angelic beauty; but though the images are nearly the same, the numbers will be found, upon comparison, very different:

And now a stripling cherub he appears,

Not of the prime, yet such as in his face
Youth smil'd celestial, and to ev'ry limb
Suitable grace diffus'd, so well he feign'd;

Under a coronet his flowing hair

In curls on either cheek play'd: wings he wore
Of many a colour'd plume, sprinkled with gold.

Some of the lines of this description are remarkably defective in harmony, and therefore by no means correspond. ent with that symmetrical elegance and easy grace, which they are intended to exhibit. The failure, however, is fully compensated by the representation of Raphael, which equally delights the ear and imagination :

A seraph wing'd: six wings he wore to shade
His lineaments divine; the pair that clad

Each shoulder broad, came mantling o'er his breast
With regal ornament: the middle pair

Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round
Skirted his loins and thighs, with downy gold,
And colours dipp'd in heav'n; the third his feet
Shadow'd from either heel with feather'd mail,
Sky-tinctur'd grain! like Maia's son he stood,

And shook his plumes, that heav'nly fragrance fill'd
The circuit wide.-

The adumbration of particular and distinct images by an exact and perceptible resemblance of sound, is sometimes studied, and sometimes casual. Every language has many words formed in imitation of the noises which they signify. Such are stridor, balo, and beatus, in Latin; and in English, to growl, to buzz, to hiss, and to jar. Words of this kind give to a verse the proper similitude of sound, without much labour of the writer, and such happiness is, therefore, to be attributed rather to fortune than skill; yet they are sometimes combined with great propriety, and undeniably contribute to enforce the impression of the idea. We hear the passing arrow in this line of Virgil:

Et fugit horrendum stridens elapsa sagitta.

Th' impetuous arrow whizes on the wing.

POPE.

And the creaking of hell-gates, in the description by Mil

ton:

Open fly

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound
Th' infernal doors; and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.-

But many beauties of this kind, which the moderns, and, perhaps, the ancients, have observed, seem to be the product of blind reverence acting upon fancy. Dionysius himself tells us, that the sound of Homer's verses sometimes exhibits the idea of corporeal bulk. Is not this a discovery nearly approaching to that of the blind man, who, after long inquiry into the nature of the scarlet colour, found that it represented nothing so much as the clangour of a trumpet? The representative power of