JE fuis donc ramené malgré moi à cette ancienne idée que je vois étre la base de tous les fyftémes, dans laquelle tous les philofophes retombent aprés mille détours, & qui m'eft démontrée par toutes les actions des hommes, par les miennes, par tous les événemens que j'ai lus, que j'ai vus, & auxquels j'ai eu part; c'eft le fatalisme, c'eft la néceffité dont je vous ai déjà parlé*.

20. Like fome lone Chartreux ftands the good old hall, Silence without, and fafts within the wall;

No rafter'd roofs with dance and tabor found,
No noontide bell invites the country round:
Tenants with fighs the fmoaklefs tow'rs survey,
And turn th' unwilling fteeds another way:
Benighted wanderers, the foreft o'er,

Curs'd the fav'd candle, and unop'ning door;
While the gaunt mastiff growling at the gate,
Affrights the beggar, whom he longs to eat t.

In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,
The floors of plaifter, and the walls of dung,
On once a flock-bed, but repair'd with straw,
With tape-ty'd curtains, never meant to draw,

"He must have a very good ftomach (fays Mr. Gray) that can digeft the Crambe recocta. of Voltaire. Atheism is a vile dish, though all the cooks of France combine to make new fauces for it." Letters, quarto, page 385.

+ Ver. 187.

The

The George and Garter dangling from that bed
Where tawdry yellow ftrove with dirty red,
Great Villers lies *.

THE ufe, the force, and the excellence of language, certainly confifts in raising, clear, complete, and circumstantial images, and in turning readers into fpectators. I have quoted the two preceding paffages as eminent examples of this excellence, of all others the most effential in poetry. Every epithet, here used, paints its object, and paints it diftinctly. After having paffed over the moat full of creffes, do you not actually find yourself in the middle court of this forlorn and folitary manfion, overgrown with docks and nettles? And do you not hear the dog that is going to affault you?— Among the other fortunate circumstances that attended Homer, it was not one of the leaft, that he wrote before general and abftract terms were invented. Hence his Mufe (like his own Helen ftanding on the walls of Troy) points out every person, and thing, accurately and forcibly. All the views

and profpects he lays before us, appear as fully and perfectly to the eye, as that which engaged the attention of Neptune, when he was fitting (Iliad, b. 13. v. 12.)

αψε επ' ακροτάτης κορυφής Σαμε ύληςσσης,
Θρηικίης* ενθεν γαρ εφαίνετο πάσα μεν ίδη,
Φαίνετο δε Πριάμοιο πολις, και νηες Αχαιών.

THOSE who are fond of generalities, may think the number of natural, little circumftances, introduced in the beautiful narration of the expedition of DOLON and DIOMED (Book the 10th) too particular and trifling, and below the dignity of Epic poetry. But every reader of a just taste will always admire the minute defcription of the helmet and creft, at verfe the 257th; the clapping of the wings of the Heron which they could not fee; the Squatting down among the dead bodies till Dolon had paffed; Ulyffes biffing to Diomed as a fignal; the ftriking the horses with his bow, because be had forgotten to bring his whip with him; and the innumerable circumftances which make this narration fo lively,

fa

fo dramatic, and fo interefting. Half the Iliad and the Odyffey might be quoted as examples of this way of writing. So different from the unfinished, half-formed figures, prefented to us by many modern writers. How much is the pathetic heightened by Sophocles, when, fpeaking of Deianira determined to deftroy herself, and taking leave of her palace, he adds, a circumftance that Voltaire would have difdained!

Κλαις δ' οργάνων ότι

Ψαύσειεν, οις εχρητο δειλαια παρος

Among the Roman poets, Lucretius will furnish many inftances of this fort of strong painting. Witness his portrait of a jealous man; Book the 4th, v. 1130.

Aut quod in ambiguo verbum jaculata reliquit;
Aut nimium jactare oculos, aliumve tueri

Quod putat, in vultûque videt veftigia rifûs.

Of Iphigenia going to be facrificed, at the moment, when,

-

mæftum ante aras aftare parentem

Senfit, & hunc propter ferrum celare miniftros t.

Trachiniæ, v. 922.

+ Book i. v. 21.

Of Fear, in Book iii. v. 155.

Sudorem itaque & pallorem exiftere toto
Corpore; & infringi linguam; vocemque aboriri;
Caligare oculos; fonere aures; fuccidere artus.

WITHOUT fpecifying the various strokes of nature, with which Virgil has described the prognoftics of the weather in his first Georgic, let us only confider with what energy he has enumerated and particularized the geftures and attitudes of his dying Dido. No five verfes ever contained more images, or images more diftinctly expreffed. Illa graves oculos conata attollere, rurfus

Deficit; infixum ftridet fub pectore vulnus :
Ter fefe attollens, cubitoque innixa levavit,
Ter revoluta taro eft: oculifque errantibus, alto
Quæfivit cælo lucem, ingemuitque repertâ *.

The words of Virgil have here painted the dying Dido, as powerfully as the pencil of Reynolds has done, when he is just dead,

BUT none of the Roman writers has difplayed a greater force and vigour of imagination than TACITUS; who was in truth

* Æn. iv, 688.

a great