A SHEPHERD in Theocritus wishes with much tenderness and elegance, both which. must suffer in a literal translation, "Would "I could become a murmuring bee, fly into your grotto, and be permitted to creep athe leaves of ivy and fern that compofe the chaplet which adorns your head*." POPE has thus altered this image, mong Oh! were I made by fome transforming pow'r, On three accounts the former image is preferable to the latter: for the paftoral wildnefs, the delicacy, and the uncommonness of the thought, I cannot forbear adding, that the riddle of the Royal Oak, in the first Pastoral, invented in imitation of the Virgilian ænigmas in the third eclogue, favours of pun, and puerile conceit. Αιθε γενοίμαν Α βομβευσα μιλισσα, κι ἐς τεον ανρον ἐκοιμαν, Τον κισσον διαδυς, και των πλεριν & το πυκασδη. Idyll. iii. 12. + Paft. ii. 45. Say Say, Daphnis, fay in what glad foil appears With what propriety could the tree, whose hade protected the king, be faid to be prolific of princes? THAT POPE has not equalled Theocritus, will indeed appear lefs surprising, if we reflect, that no original writer ever remained fo unrivalled by fucceeding copyifts, as this Sicilian mafter. If it should be objected, that the barrennefs of invention imputed to PoPE from a view of his PASTOR ALS, is equally imputable to the Bucolics of Virgil, it may be answered, that whatever may be determined of the rest, yet the first and laft Eclogues of Virgil are indifputable proofs of true genius, and power of fancy. The influence of war on the tranquility of rural life, rendered the subject of the first new, and interesting: its compofition is truly dramatic; and the characters of of its two fhepherds are well fupported, and happily contrafted: and the last has expreffively painted the changeful refolutions, the wild wishes, the paffionate and abrupt exclamations, of a disappointed and defpairing lover. UPON the whole, the principal merit of the PASTORALS of POPE confifts, in their correct and mufical verfification; mufical, to a degree of which rhyme could hardly be thought capable: and in giving the first specimen of that harmony in English verse, which is now become indifpenfibly neceffary; and which has fo forcibly and univerfally influenced the public ear, as to have rendered every moderate rhymer melodious. POPE lengthened the abruptnefs of Waller, and at the fame time contracted the exuberance of Dryden. REMEMBER to have been informed, by an intimate friend of POPE, that he had once laid a defign of writing AMERICAN ECLOGUES: ECLOGUES: The fubject would have been fruitful of the most poetical imagery; and, if properly executed, would have rescued the author from the accufation here urged, of having written Eclogues without invention. OUR author, who had received an early tincture of religion, a reverence for which he preferved to the laft, was with justice convinced, that the Scriptures of God contained not only the pureft precepts of morality but the most elevated and fublime ftrokes of genuine poefy; ftrokes, as much fuperior to any thing Heathenifm can produce, as is Jehovah to Jupiter. This is the cafe more particularly in the exalted prophesy of Isaiah, which POPE has fo fuccefsfully verified in an Eclogue, that inconteftably furpaffes the Pollio of Virgil: although perhaps the dignity, the energy, and the fimplicity of the original are in a few paffages weakened and diminished by florid epithets, and useless circumlocutions. See See nature haftes her earlieft wreaths to bring, are lines, which have too much prettiness, and too modern an air. The judicious addition of circumftances and adjuncts is what renders poefy a more lively imitation of nature than profe. POPE has been happy in introducing the following circumstance : the prophet says, "The parched ground shall "become a pool ;" Our author expresses this idea by saying, that the shepherd, fall START amid the thirfty wild to hear New falls of water murmuring in his ear †. A ftriking example of a fimilar beauty may be added from Thompfon. Melifander, in the Tragedy of AGAMEMNON, after telling us he was conveyed in a veffel, at mid-night to the wildest of the Cyclades, adds, when the pitiless mariners had left him in that dreadful folitude, I never heard A found fo difmal as their parting oars! * MESS. V. 23. tv. 70. ON |