barbarous age,) yet how short he comes of him, and substitutes such verses of his own as deserve the ferula. What a censure has he made of Lucan, that he rather seems to bark than sing! Would any but a dog have made so snarling a comparison? One would have thought he had learned Latin as late as they tell us he did Greek. Yet he came off with a pace tua, by your good leave, Lucan; he called him not by those outrageous names, of fool, booby, and blockhead: he had somewhat more of good manners than his successors, as he had much more knowledge. We have two sorts of those gentlemen in our nation: some of them proceeding with a seeming moderation and pretence of respect to the dramatic writers of the last age, only scorn and vilify the present poets, to set up their predecessors. But this is only in appearance; for their real design is nothing less than to do honour to any man, besides themselves. Horace took notice of such men in his age:

-Non ingeniis favet ille sepultis; Nostra sed impugnat; nos nostraque lividus odit. It is not with an ultimate intention to pay reverence to the manes of Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson, that they commend their writings, but to throw dirt on the writers of this age: their declaration is one thing, and their practice is another. By a seeming veneration to our fathers, they would thrust out us their lawful issue, and govern us themselves, under a specious pretence of reformation. If they could compass their intent, what would wit and learning get by such a change? if we are bad poets, they are worse; and when any of their woful pieces come abroad, the difference is so great betwixt them and good writers, that there need no criticisms on our part to decide it. When they describe the writers of this age, they draw such monstrous figures of them, as resemble none of us : our pretended pictures are so unlike, that it is evident we never sat to them: they are all grotesque; the products of their wild imaginations, things out of nature, so far from being copied from us, that they resemble nothing that ever was, or ever can be. But there is another sort of insects, more venomous than the former. Those who manifestly aim at the destruction of our poetical church and state, who allow nothing to their countrymen, either of this or of the former age; these attack the living by raking up the ashes of the dead; well knowing that if they can subvert their original title to the stage, we who claim under them must fall of course. Peace be to the venerable shades of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson: none

of the living will presume to have any competition with them: as they were our predecessors, so they were our masters. We trail our plays under them, but (as at the funerals of a Turkish emperor) our ensigns are furled or dragged upon the ground, in honour to the dead; so we may lawfully advance our own, afterwards, to show that we succeed: if less in dignity yet on the same foot and title, which we think too we can maintain against the insolence of our own janizaries. If I am the man, as I have reason to believe, who am seemingly courted, and secretly undermined, I think I shall be able to defend myself, when I am openly attacked. And to show besides that the Greek writers only gave us the rudiments of a stage which they never finished: that many of the tragedies in the former age among us were without comparison beyond those of Sophocles and Euripides. But at present, I have neither the leisure nor the means for such an undertaking. It is ill going to law for an estate, with him who is in possession of it, and enjoys the present profits, to feed his cause. But the quantum mutatus may be remembered in due time. In the mean while, I leave the world to judge, who gave the provocation.

This, my Lord, is, I confess, a long digression, from Miscellany Poems to Modern Tragedies: but I have the ordinary excuse of an injured man, who will be telling his tale unseasonably to his betters; though at the same time, I am certain you are so good a friend, as to take a concern in all things which belong to one who so truly honours you. And besides, being yourself a critic of the genuine sort, who have read the best authors in their own languages, who perfectly distinguish of their several merits, and in general prefer them to the moderns, yet, I know, you judge for the English tragedies, against the Greek and Latin, as well as against the French, Italian, and Spanish, of these latter ages. Indeed there is a vast difference betwixt arguing like Perault in behalf of the French poets, against Homer and Virgil, and betwixt giving the English poets their undoubted due of excelling schylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. For if we or our greater fathers have not yet brought the drama to an absolute perfection, yet at least we have carried it much farther than those ancient Greeks; who, beginning from a chorus, could never totally exclude it, as we have done; who find it an unprofitable encumbrance, without any necessity of entertaining it among us; and without the possibility of establishing it here unless it were supported by a public charge. Neither can we accept of those lay-bishops, as some call them,

who, under pretence of reforming the stage, would intrude themselves upon us, as our superiors, being indeed incompetent judges of what is manners, what religion, and least of all, what is poetry and good sense. I can tell them in behalf of all my fellows, that when they come to exercise a jurisdiction over us, they shall have the stage to themselves, as they have the laurel. As little can I grant, that the French dramatic writers excel the English: our authors as far surpass them in genius, as our soldiers excel theirs in courage: it is true, in conduct they surpass us either way: yet that proceeds not so much from their greater knowledge, as from difference of taste in the two nations. They content themselves with a thin design, without episodes, and managed by few persons. Our audience will not be pleased but with variety of accidents, an underplot, and many actors. They follow the ancients too servilely, in the mechanic rules, and we assume too much license to ourselves in keeping them only in view, at too great a distance. But if our audience had their tastes, our poets could more easily comply with them, than the French writers could come up to the sublimity of our thoughts, or to the difficult variety of our designs. However it be, I dare establish it for a rule of practice on the stage, that we are bound to please those whom we pretend to entertain; and that at any price, religion and good manners only excepted; and I care not much, if I give this handle to our bad illiterate poetasters, for the defence of their SCRIPTIONS as they call them. There is a sort of merit in delighting the spectators; which is a name more proper for them, than that of auditors, or else Horace is in the wrong, when he commends Lucilius for it. But these common places I mean to treat at greater leisure: in the mean time, submitting that little I have said to your Lordship's approbation, or your censure, and choosing rather to entertain you this way, as you are a judge of writing, than to oppress your modesty with other commendations; which, though they are your due, yet would not be equally received in this satirical and censorious age. That which cannot with out injury be denied to you, is the easiness of your conversation, far from affectation or pride: not denying even to enemies their just praises. And this, if I would dwell on any theme of this nature, is no vulgar commendation to your Lordship. Without flattery, my Lord, you have it in your nature, to be a patron and encourager of good poets, but your fortune has not yet put into your hands the opportunity of expressing it. What you will be hereafter, may be more than guessed, by what you are

at present. You maintain the character of a nobleman, without that haughtiness which generally attends too many of the nobility, and when you converse with gentlemen, you forget not that you have been of their order. You are married to the daughter of a king, who, among her other high perfections, has derived from him a charming behaviour, a winning goodness, and a majestic person. The Muses and the Graces are the ornaments of your family; while the Muse sings, the Grace accompanies her voice: even the servants of the Muses have sometimes had the happiness to hear her; and to receive their inspirations from her.

I will not give myself the liberty of going farther; for it is so sweet to wander in a pleasing way, that I should never arrive at my journey's end. To keep myself from being belated in my letter, and tiring your attention, I must return to the place where I was setting out. I humbly dedicate to your Lordship my own labours in this Miscellany: at the same time, not arrogating to myself the privilege of inscribing to you the works of others who are joined with me in this undertaking, over which I can pretend no right. Your lady and you have done me the favour to hear me read my translations of Ovid: and you both seemed not to be displeased with them. Whether it be the partiality of an old man to his youngest child, I know not: but they appear to me the best of all my endeavours in this kind. Perhaps this poet is more easy to be translated than some others, whom I have lately attempted: perhaps too, he was more according to my genius. He is certainly more palatable to the reader, than any of the Roman wits, though some of them are more lofty, some more instructive, and others more correct. He had learning enough to make him equal in the best. But as his verse came easily, he wanted the toil of application to amend it. He is often luxuriant both in his fancy and expressions, and as it has lately been observed, not always natural. If wit be pleasantry,he has it to excess; but if it be propriety, Lucretius, Horace, and, above all, Virgil, are his superiors. I have said so much of him already, in my preface to his heroical epistles, that there remains little to be added in this place for my own part, I have endeavoured to copy his character what I could in this translation, even, perhaps, farther than I should have done; to his very faults. Mr. Chapman, in his translation of Homer, professes to have done it somewhat paraphrastically, and that on set purpose; his opinion being, that a good poet is to be translated in that manner. I remember not the reason which he gives for it:

:

but I suppose it is, for fear of omitting any of his excellencies: sure I am, that if it be a fault, it is much more pardonable than that of those, who run into the other extreme of a literal and close translation, where the poet is confined so straitly to his author's words, that he wants elbowroom to express his elegancies. He leaves him obscure; he leaves him prose where he found him verse: and no better than thus has Ovid been served by the so much admired Sandys. This is at least the idea which I have remaining of his translation; for I never read him since I was a boy. They who take him upon content, from the praises which their fathers gave him, may inform their judgment by reading him again, and see (if they understand the original) what is become of Ovid's poetry in his version; whether it be not all, or the greatest part of it, evaporated: but this proceeded from the wrong judgment of the age in which he lived. They neither knew good verse nor loved it! they were scholars, it is true, but they were pedants. And for a just reward of their pedantic pains, all their translations want to be translated into English.

If I flatter not myself, or if my friends have not flattered me, I have given my author's sense, for the most part, truly for to mistake sometimes is incident to all men, and not to follow the Dutch commentators always, may be forgiven to a man who thinks them in the general heavy gross-witted fellows, fit only to gloss on their own dull poets. But I leave a farther satire on their wit, till I have a better opportunity to show how much I love and honour them. I have likewise attempted to restore Ovid to his native sweetness, easiness, and smoothness; and to give my poetry a kind of cadence, and, as we call it, a run of verse, as like the original, as the English can come up to the Latin. As he seldom uses any synalephas, so I have endeavoured to avoid them, as often as I could: I have likewise given him his own turns, both on the words and on the thought, which I cannot say are inimitable, because I have copied them; and so may others, if they use the same diligence but certainly they are wonderfully graceful in this poet. Since I have named the synalepha, which is the cutting off one vowel immediately before another, I will give an example of it from Chapman's Homer, which lies before me; for the benefit of those who understand not the Latin Prosodia. It is in the first line of the argument to the first Iliad.

Apollo's priest to th' Argive fleet doth bring, &c. There we see he makes it not the Argive, but th' Argive, to shun the shock of the two vowels,

immediately following each other, but in his se cond argument, in the same page, he gives a bad example of the quite contrary kind :

Alpha the pray'r of Chryses sings : The army's plague, the strife of kings. In these words the army's, the ending with a vowel, and army's, beginning with another vowel, without cutting off the first, which by it had been th' army's, there remains a most horrible ill-sounding gap betwixt those words. I cannot say that I have every where observed the rule of the synalepha in my translation; but wheresoever I have not, it is a fault in sound: the French and the Italians have made it an inviola

ble precept in their versification; therein following the severe example of the Latin poets. Our countrymen have not yet not reformed their poetry so far, but content themselves with following the licentious practice of the Greeks; who, though they sometimes use synalephas, yet make no difficulty very often, to sound one vowel upon another; as Homer does in the very first line of Alpha. Μήνιν άειδε Θεὰ, Πηληιάδεω 'Axiños. It is true, indeed, that in the second line, in these words, μυρί' Αχαιοῖς and ἄλγε Onke, the synalepha in revenge is twice observed. But it becomes us, for the sake of euphony, rather Musas colere severiores, with the Romans, than to give in to the looseness of the Grecians.

I have tired myself, and have been summoned by the press to send away this dedication, otherwise I had exposed some other faults, which are daily committed by our English poets; which, with care and observation, might be amended. For, after all, our language is both copious, significant, and majestical, and might be reduced into a more harmonious sound. But, for want of public encouragement, in this iron age, we are so far from making any progress in the improvement of our tongue, that in few years, we shall speak and write as barbarously as our neighbours.

Notwithstanding my haste, I cannot forbear to tell your Lordship, that there are two fragments of Homer translated in this Miscellany; one by Mr. Congreve (whom I cannot mention without the honour which is due to his excellent parts, and that entire affection which I bear him) and the other by myself. Both the subjects are pathetical, and I am sure my friend has added to the tenderness which he found in the original, and, without flattery, surpassed his author. Yet I must needs say this in reference to Homer, that he is much more capable of exciting the manly passions then those of grief and pity. To cause admiration, is indeed the proper and

adequate design of an epic poem: and in that he has excelled even Virgil; yet, without presum ing to arraign our master, I may venture to affirm, that he is somewhat too talkative, and more than somewhat too digressive. This is so manifest, that it cannot be denied, in that little parcel which I have translated, perhaps too literally there Andromache, in the midst of her concernment and fright for Hector, runs off her bias, to tell him a story of her pedigree, and of the lamentable death of her father, her mother, and her seven brothers. The devil was in Hector if he knew not all this matter, as well as she who told it him; for she had been his bedfellow for many years together: and if he knew it, then it must be confessed, that Homer in his long digression has rather given us his own character than that of the fair lady whom he paints. His dear friends the commentators, who never fail him at a pinch, will needs excuse him, by making the present sorrow of Andromache to occasion the remembrance of all the past but others think that she had enough to do with that grief which now oppressed her, without running for assistance to her family. Virgil, I am confident, would have omitted such a work of supererogation. But Virgil had the gift of expressing much in little, and sometimes in silence: for though he yielded much to Homer in invention, he more excelled him in his admirable judgment. He drew the passion of Dido for Eneas, in the most lively and most natural colours imaginable. Homer was ambitious enough of moving pity; for he has attempted twice on the same subject of Hector's death: first, when Priam and Hecuba beheld his corpse, which was dragged after the chariot of Achilles; and then in the lamentation which was made over him, when his body was redeemed by Priam; and the same persons again bewail his death, with a chorus of others to help the cry. But if this last excite compassion in you, as I doubt not but it will, you are more obliged to the translator than the poet: for Homer, as I observed before, can move rage better than he can pity: he stirs up the irascible appetite, as our philosophers call it; he provokes to murther, and the destruction of God's images; he forms and equips those ungodly mankillers, whom we poets, when we flatter them, call heroes; a race of men who can never enjoy quiet in themselves, till they have taken it from all the world, This is Homer's commendation, and such as it is, the lovers of peace, or at least of more moderate heroism, will never envy him. But let Homer and Virgil contend for the prize of honour, betwixt themselves, I am satisfied they will never have a third concurrent. I wish Mr. Congreve had the leisure to translate

him, and the world the good nature and justice to encourage him in that noble design, of which he is more capable then any man I know. The Earl of Mulgrave and Mr. Waller, two of the best judges of our age, have assured me, that they could never read over the translation of Chapman, without incredible pleasure and extreme transport. This admiration of theirs must needs proceed from the author himself: for the translator has thrown him down as low as harsh numbers, improper English, and a monstrous length of verse could carry him. What then would he appear in the harmonious version of one of the best writers, living in a much bet ter age than was the last? I mean for versification, and the art of numbers: for in the drama we have not arrived to the pitch of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. But here, my Lord, I am forced to break off abruptly, without endeavouring at a compliment in the close. This Miscellany is, without dispute, one of the best of the kind, which has hitherto been extant in our tongue. At least, as Sir Samuel Tuke has said before me, a modest man may praise what is not his own. My fellows have no need of any protection, but I humbly recommend my part of it as much as it deserves, to your patronage and acceptance, and all the rest of your forgiveness. I am, my Lord,

Your Lordship's most obedient Servant, JOHN DRYDEN.

THE FIRST BOOK OF OVID'S METAMORPHOSES.

Or bodies chang'd to various forms I sing:
Ye gods, from whence these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with celestial heat;
Till I my long laborious work complete;
And add perpetual tenor to my rhymes,
Deduc'd from nature's birth, to Caesar's times.
Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And heaven's high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of nature, if a face:
Rather a rude and indigested mass:
A lifeless lump, unfashion'd, and unfram'd
Of jarring seeds, and justly Chaos nam'd.
No sun was lighted up the world to view;
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew:
Nor yet was earth suspended in the sky;
Nor, pois'd, did on her own foundations lie;
Nor seas about the shores their arms had
thrown;

But earth, and air, and water, were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water's dark abyss unnavigable.

But God, or Nature, while they thus contend,
To these intestine discords put an end.
Then earth from air, and seas from earth were
driven,

And grosser air sunk from ethereal heaven
Thus disembroil'd, they take their proper place;
The next of kin contiguously embrace;
And foes are sunder'd by a larger space.
The force of fire ascended first on high,
And took its dwelling in the vaulted sky.
Then air succeeds, in lightness next to fire:
Whose atoms from unactive earth retire.
Earth sinks beneath, and draws a numerous
throng

Of ponderous, thick, unwieldy seeds along.
About her coasts unruly waters roar,
And, rising on a ridge, insult the shore.
Thus, when the God, whatever God was he,
Had form'd the whole, and made the parts

agree,

That no unequal portions might be found,
He moulded earth into a spacious round:
Then, with a breath, he gave the winds to blow;
And bade the congregated waters flow.
He adds the running springs, and standing
lakes;

And bounding banks for winding rivers makes.
Some part in earth are swallow'd up, the most
In ample oceans, disembogu'd, are lost.
He shades the woods, the valleys he restrains
With rocky mountains, and extends the plains.
And as five zones the ethereal regions bind,
Five, correspondent, are to earth assign'd:
The sun, with rays directly darting down,
Fires all beneath, and fries the middle zone :
The two beneath the distant poles complain
Of endless winter, and perpetual rain.
Betwixt the extremes, two happier climates hold
The temper that partakes of hot and cold.
The fields of liquid air, enclosing all,
Surround the compass of this earthly ball:
The lighter parts lie next the fires above;
The grosser near the wat'ry surface move:
Thick clouds are spread, and storms engender

here,

And thunder's voice, which wretched mortals fear,

And winds that on their wings cold winter bear. Nor were those blust'ring brethren left at large, On seas and shores their fury to discharge: Bound as they are, and circumscrib'd in place, They rend the world, resistless, where they pass;

And mighty marks of mischief leave behind;
Such is the rage of their tempestuous kind.
First Eurus to the rising morn is sent,
(The regions of the balmy continent,)
And eastern realms, where early Persians run,
To greet the blest appearance of the sun.
Westward the wanton Zephyr wings his flight,
Pleas'd with the remnants of departing light:
Fierce Boreas with his offspring issues forth,
To invade the frozen wagon of the north.
While frowning Auster seeks the southern
sphere,

And rots, with endless rain, the unwholesome
year.
[wind,

High o'er the clouds, and empty realms of The God a clearer space for heaven design'd; Where fields of light, and liquid ether flow, Purg'd from the ponderous dregs of earth below. Scarce had the power distinguish'd these,

when straight

The stars, no longer overlaid with weight,
Exert their heads from underneath the mass,
And upward shoot, and kindle as they pass,
And with diffusive light adorn the heavenly
place.

Then, every void of nature to supply,
With forms of gods he fills the vacant sky:
New herds of beasts he sends, the plains to
New colonies of birds, to people air; [share;
And to their oozy beds the finny fish repair.
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was Man design'd:
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire form'd, and fit to rule the rest:
Whether with particles of heavenly fire
The god of nature did his soul inspire;
Or earth, but new divided from the sky,
And pliant still, retain'd the ethereal energy:
Which wise Prometheus temper'd into paste,
And, mixt with living streams, the godlike image

cast.

Thus, while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own heredi ary skies.
From such rude principles our form began,
And earth was metamorphos'd into man.

THE GOLDEN AGE.

The golden age was first; when man, yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew ;
And with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforc'd by punishment, unaw'd by fear,
His words were simple, and his soul sincere :
Needless was written law, where none opprest;