תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

The Fan is one of those mythological fictions which antiquity delivers ready to the hand; but which, like other things that lie open to every one's use, are of little value. The attention naturally retires from a new tale of Venus, Diana, and Minerva.

His Fables feem to have been a favourite work; for, having published one volume, he left another behind him. Of this kind of Fables, the authors do not appear to have formed any diftinct or fettled notion. Phedrus evidently confounds them with Tales, and Gay both with Tales and Allegories. A Fable or Apologue, fuch as is now under confideration, feems to be, in its genuine ftate, a narrative in which beings irrational, and fometimes inanimate, arbores loquuntur, non tantum feræ, are, for the purpose of moral inftruction, feigned to act and speak with human interefts and paffions. To this defcription the compofitions of Gay do not always conform. For a Fable he gives now and then a Tale or an Allegory; and from fome, by whatever name they may be cailed, it will be difficult to extract any moral principle. They are, however, told with live

linefs;

linefs; the verfification is smooth, and the diction, though now-and-then a little constrained by the measure or the rhyme, is generally happy.

The

To Trivia may be allowed all that it claims; it is fpritely, various, and pleasant. fubject is of that kind which Gay was by nature qualified to adorn; yet fome of his decorations may be juftly wifhed away. An honeft blacksmith might have done for Patty what is performed by Vulcan. The appearance of Cloacina is naufeous and fuperfluous; a fhoeboy could have been produced by the cafual cohabitation of mere mortals. Horace's rule is broken in both cafes; there is no dignus vindice nodus, no difficulty that required any supernatural interposition. A patten may be made by the hammer of a mortal, and a baftard may be dropped by a human ftrumpet. On great occafions, and on fmall, the mind is repelled by ufelefs and apparent falfehood.

Of his little Poems the publick judgement feems to be right; they are neither much esteemed, nor totally defpifed. Those that please

2

pleafe leaft are the pieces to which Gulliver gave occafion; for who can much delight in the echo of an unnatural fiction?

Dione is a counterpart to Amynta, and Paftor Fido, and other trifles of the fame kind, easily imitated, and unworthy of imitation. What the Italians call comedies from a happy conclufion, Gay calls a tragedy from a mournful event, but the ftyle of the Italians and of Gay is equally tragical. There is fomething in the poetical Arcadia fo remote from known reality and speculative poffibility, that we can never support its representation through a long work. A Paftoral of an hundred lines may be endured; but who will hear of sheep and goats, and myrtle bowers and purling rivulets, through five acts? Such scenes please Barbarians in the dawn of literature, and children in the dawn of life; but will be for the most part thrown away, as men grow wife, and nations grow learned.

GRAN

GRANVILLE.

« הקודםהמשך »