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What next she had design'd, heaven only knows:
To such immod'rate growth her conquest rose,
That fate alone its progress could oppose.

In the succeeding stanza, he seems to have forgot that what he had before been celebrating were charms of the mind only, for it is the loss of so much beauty that he now deplores, with some ingenious turns relative to her being robbed of her beauties before she lost her life,

The sentiment which follows, respecting her "warlike brother on the seas," is natural and pathetic; but its effect is injured by the artificial idea with which it concludes, of his recognizing his sister in a new-kindled star, among the Pleiades.

The finishing stanza presents a picture of the last judg ment; a scene, Dr. Johnson says, "so awful in itself, that it can owe little to poetry." That it may, however, easily be debased by poetry, Dryden has taken care to prove. These are some lines on the subject in this paragon of odes: When in the valley of Jehosophat,

The judging God shall close the book of fate;
And there the last assizes keep

For those who wake, and those who sleep:

When rattling bones together fly

From the four corners of the sky;

When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread, &c.

At the general resurrection, he says, the poets shall rise first,

For they are cover'd with the lightest ground.

Was it from this Ode that Johnson thought himself warranted to speak of Dryden, as "shewing the rectitude of his mind by the rejection of unnatural thoughts?"

That the piece possesses great variety of imagery, a splendor of diction and brilliance of fancy in various parts, and elevation in some others, may be safely acknowledged; at the same time, it seems to want throughout that warmth of pathos, and sublimity of conception, which are requisite to the perfection of lyric compositions; and if, to this consideration, we add the deductions for so many false and extravagant thoughts, inadequate and trivial images, we may surely be authorized to assert, that nothing but the grossest prejudice could have caused the critic's unqualified preference of this poem to many others of the same class in our language.

It may be observed as a remarkable instance either of caprice, or of singularity in judgment, that, while Dr. Johnson is so extremely partial to Dryden's poetical merit in pieces which readers in general pass over with neglect, he has hardly deigned to bestow a single sentence of approbation · on his Fables, which by other critics are supposed to contain the richest vein of poetry to be found in all his works, the Feast of Alexander alone excepted.

1787, Nov.

J. A.

XCIX. Union of Imagination and Judgment indispensably required in Poetry.

MR. URBAN,

Nov. 6.

IT is asserted by ARISTOTLE, that "Poetry is the production either of the Man of Genius or the Enthusiast," EuQues Hointien esin Manxe, cap. XVII. Winst. Ed. Arist. Poet. His imitator, HORACE, also allows the distinguished title of Poet, in the strictest sense, to him only " ingenium cui sit, cui mens divinior," Sat. 1. 4. 43: and yet the same author, in another passage, affirms, without any qualification of his assertion, that scribendi recte SAPERE est et principium et fons.' A. P. 309. Let us see how these two passages of the Roman critic may be reconciled, and shew with what propriety good sense or Judgment may be called the source of excellent composition.

The offices of Imagination and Judgment are not only distinct, but contrary to each other. It is the business of Imagination either to collect ideas already adopted, or to create new images; but the work of Judgment is to separate what may have been collected, and to reject many conceptions of a productive genius. Yet, with this diversity in their operations, they are both necessary to the True Poet; so necessary, that without Imagination the productions of sober Judgment would be tame and insipid; without Judgment, the works of Imagination would be absurd and inconsistent: where they both unite, is excellence; where either is separated from the other, must be defect.

If we examine the writings of the best poets, whether ancient or modern, we shall find that, in those unfavourable moments when Judgment neglected to guide Imagination, they fell into gross errors. Particular instances, in proof of this assertion, may be adduced from the allegorical person

ages and metaphorical figures of the poets. Though allegories and metaphors are justly styled the lights of composition, yet, without extreme circumspection in the use of them, writers are wont to confound their imaginary concep tions with real circumstances, and to introduce ideas not congruous to each other. Even Virgil is not without fault on this account, as the following lines will shew:

Jamque volans apicem et latera ardua cernit

Atlantis duri, cœlum qui vertice fulcit;
Atlantis, cinctum assidue cui nubibus atris
Piniferum caput et vento pulsatur et imbri;
Nix humeros infusa tegit; tum FLUMINA MENTO
Præcipitant senis-

VIRG. En. iv. 246.

From the whole of this passage we are to conceive ATLAS a person; but if so, how can rivers flow from his chin? What should we think of his taste, who should form a mountain statue in imitation of Farnese Atlas, and contrive to make real water run out of its chin? Thus, by a failure of Judgment in one circumstance, a description, in other respects noble, loses much of its beauty.

In the representation which HORACE gives of the river TIBER, B. 1. Od. ii. we see the same confusion of imaginary personage and literal circumstance:

Iliæ dum se nimium querenti

JACTAT ultorem, VAGUS et sinistra
LABITUR ripa, Jove non probante,
Uxorius Amnis.

Here, in the same passage, TIBER is introduced as an avenging deity, and as an overflowing river. If the Tiber be a deity, then how could he overflow? but if a river, how could he console Ilia by threatening vengeance on the murderers of Julius Cæsar? It will be no excuse to plead that Homer has taken the same unwarrantable liberty in the twenty-first book of the Iliad. SCAMANDER there expostulates with ACHILLES, appearing av soμs; and yet presently we find him supplanting the hero, inaida jar, "by flowing on under his feet." The speaking god and flowing river are here confounded together; and it must be acknowledged that in this allegorical fiction "Dormitat Homerus."

By a single word has HORACE debased an allegory, otherwise poetical and bold. He promises himself immortality, and, under the figure of a swan, says, in a strain very animated,

Jam Dædaleo ocyor Icaro
Visam gementis littora Bosphori,
Syrtesque Gætulas, CANORUS

ALES, Hyperboreosque campos :
Me Colchus, et qui dissimulat metum
Marsæ cohortis Dacus, et ultimi
Noscent Geloni; me peritus

DISCET Iber, Rhodanique potor.

Not to enlarge on the frigidity of DISCET, we must observe at once how incongruous it is with what precedes. If the poet is transformed into a CANORUS ALES, how can he apply the word DISCET, or the epithet PERITUS, to the Iberian? The image of a bird being once adopted, should have been pursued throughout; whereas, after beginning with the flight of a bird, the poet ends with the reading of his works.

When such writers as HOMER, VIRGIL, and HORACE, have not always been sufficiently guarded in delineating allegorical figures, we are not surprised to find OVID vicious in the same particular. "Ovidius lascivire in Metamorphosi solet"-" nimium amator ingenii sui, laudandus tamen in partibus-præstare potuerit, si ingenio suo temperare, quam indulgere, maluisset." Quinctil.-The writings of OVID shew evident marks of luxuriant imagination, but no signs of subact judgment. These alone abundantly prove the propriety of the Horatian maxims we are endeavouring to reconcile. A true poet must possess not only genius but sound sense also. We need but look into Ovid's description of TELLUS, Metam. Book II. Fab. I. to be convinced how little capable he was of avoiding incongruities. The allegorical figure TELLUS is introduced as complaining to Jupiter of the conflagration occasioned by Phaeton :

Tostos en aspice crines,

Inque oculis tantum, tantum super ora favillæ.

Here is a person with hair burnt, and face covered with burning embers, who thus proceeds,

Hosne mihi fructus, hunc fertilitatis honorem
Officiique refers ?

Thus far all is consistent; but now comes the literal cir

cumstance:

quod adunci vulnera aratri

Rastrorumque fero

Here is the confusion of a complaining goddess and the

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earthy sod blended together: a goddess could not bear the "vulnera aratri;" the earthy sod could not have "tostos crines" and "tantum super ora favilla," or make complaint to Jupiter.

It is well observed by Lord HALIFAX on DRYDEN'S "Hind and Panther," that in carrying on this allegory "it should always be a church, or always a cloven-footed beast; for we cannot bear his shifting the scene every line." It was an unpardonable absurdity to speak of the church as feeding on lawns, or of a panther as reading the Bible. The images with their appropriated attributes should ever be kept distinct; and in a composition of considerable length it is extraordinary that DRYDEN should not perceive the incongruity of ideas which had been brought together. It is easy to be conceived, that where a poet by the force of imagination is hurried away to express a sublime thought, he may not immediately discover that he has violated simplicity, which is more severe than to bear conceit or puerility; for this

reason,

Omne quotannis

Terque quaterque opus evolvendum, verbaque versis
Eternum immutanda coloribus; omne frequenti

Sæpe revisendum studio per singula carmen.

Vidæ A. P. iii. 494.

The lovers of GRAY (and such must all be who can feel the power of vigorous and animated poetry) have regretted his admission of the real and figurative thought, which this

stanza contains:

Nor second He, that rode sublime
Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstacy,
The secrets of th' Abyss to spy.

He pass'd the flaming bounds of Place and Time:
The living throne, the sapphire-blaze,

Where angels tremble while they gaze,

He saw: BUT, BLASTED WITH EXCESS OF Light,
CLOSED HIS EYES IN ENDLESS NIGHT.

GRAY'S Prog. of Poesy.

The former part of this stanza is highly poetical, being strongly imagined and forcibly expressed. But the imputing of Milton's real blindness to his ecstatic view of celestial objects is a vicious mixture of fiction and truth, and too much like an Ovidian conceit. The passage cited from Homer, by Gray himself, is no vindication of this unnatural sentiment: the MUSE is said by Homer to have deprived

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