The lawless surges wake; Nor Jove's dread bolt, that shakes the pole, With all its powers can shake. "Should nature's frame in ruins fall, His courage chance and fate defies, Nor feels the wreck of earth and skies Obstruct its destin'd sway." If poetry exists independent of versification, it will naturally be asked, how then is it to be distinguished? Undoubtedly, by its own peculiar expression: it has a language of its own, which speaks so feelingly to the heart, and so pleasingly to the imagination, that its meaning cannot possibly be misunderstood by any person of delicate sensations. It is a species of painting with words, in which the figures are happily conceived, ingeniously arranged, affectingly expressed, and recommended with all the warmth and harmony of coloring: it consists of imagery, description, metaphors, similes, and sentiments, adapted with propriety to the subject, so contrived and executed as to soothe the ear, surprise and delight the fancy, mend and melt the heart, elevate the mind, and please the understanding. According to Flaccus: "Aut prodesse volunt, aut delectare poetæ ; Poets would profit or delight mankind, And with th' amusing show th' instructive join'd." "Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci Profit and pleasure mingled thus with art, Tropes and figures are likewise liberally used in rhetoric; and some of the most celebrated orators have owned themselves much indebted to the poets. Theophrastus expressly recommends the poets for this purpose. From their source, the spirit and energy of the pathetic, the sublime, and the beautiful, are derived. But these figures must be more sparingly used in rhetoric than in poetry, and even then mingled with argumentation, and a detail of facts altogether different from poetical narration. The poet, instead of simply relating the incident, strikes off a glowing picture of the scene, and exhibits it in the most lively colors to the eye of the imagination. "It is reported that Homer was blind," says Tully in his Tusculan Questions, "yet his poetry is no other than painting. What country, what climate, what ideas, battles, commotions, and contests of men, as well as wild beasts, has he not painted in such a manner as to bring before our eyes those very scenes, which he himself could not behold!" We cannot, therefore, subscribe to the opinion of some ingenious critics, who have blamed Mr. Pope for deviating in some instances from the simplicity of Homer, in his translation of the Iliad and Odyssey. For example, the Grecian bard says simply, the sun rose; and his translator gives us a beautiful picture of the sun rising. Homer mentions a person who played upon the lyre; the translator sets him before us warbling to the silver strings. If this be a deviation, it is at the same time an improvement. Homer himself, as Cicero observes above, is full of this kind of painting, and particularly fond of description, even in situations where the action seems to require haste. Neptune, observing from Samothrace the discomfiture of the Grecians Namque ab his (scilicet poetis) et in rebus spiritus, et in verbis sublimitas, et in affectibus motus omnis, et in personis decor petitur.-QUINTILIAN, 1. X. + Quæ regio, quæ ora, quæ species formæ, quæ pugna, qui malus hominum, qui ferarum, non ita expictus est, ut quæ ipse non viderit, nos ut videramus, effecerit ! before Troy, flies to their assistance, and might have been wafted thither in half a line: but the bard describes him, first, descending the mountain on which he sat; secondly, striding towards his palace at Ægæ, and yoking his horses; thirdly, he describes him putting on his armor; and lastly, ascending his car, and driving along the surface of the sea. Far from being disgusted by these delays, we are delighted with the particulars of the description. Nothing can be more sublime than the circumstance of the mountain's trembling beneath the footsteps of an immortal: Τρέμε δ' ο ρέα μακρὰ καὶ ὕλη Ποσσὶν ὑπ' ἀθανάτοισι Ποσειδάωνος ἴοντος. But this passage to the Grecian fleet is altogether transporting. Βῆ δ ̓ ἐλάαν ἐπὶ κύματ, κ. τ. λ. He mounts the car, the golden scourge applies, He sits superior, and the chariot flies; His whirling wheels the glassy surface sweep: The wond'ring waters leave his axle dry.— With great veneration for the memory of Mr. Pope, we cannot help objecting to some lines of this translation. We have no idea of the sea's exulting and crowning Neptune, after it had subsided into a level plain. There is no such image in the original. Homer says, the whales exulted, and knew or owned their king; and that the sea parted with joy: γηθοσύνη δὲ θαλάσσα δίσατο. Neither is there a word of the wondering waters: we therefore think the lines might be thus altered to advantage: They knew and own'd the monarch of the main: The curling waves before his coursers fly; The parting surface leaves his brazen axle dry. Besides the metaphors, similes, and allusions of poetry, there is an infinite variety of tropes, or turns of expression, occasionally disseminated through works of genius, which serve to animate the whole, and distinguish the glowing effusions of real inspiration from the cold efforts of mere science. These tropes consist of a certain happy choice and arrangement of words, by which ideas are artfully disclosed in a great variety of attitudes, of epithets, and compound epithets; of sounds collected in order to echo the sense conveyed; of apostrophes; and above all, the enchanting use of the prosopopoeia, which is a kind of magic, by which the poet gives life and motion to every inanimate part of nature. Homer, describing the wrath of Agamemnon, in the first book of the Iliad, strikes off a glowing image in two words: ὅσσε δ' οἱ πυρὶ λαμπετο ούντι ἐΐκτην. And from his eye-balls flash'd the living fire." This indeed is a figure, which has been copied by Virgil, and almost all the poets of every age-oculis micat acribus ignis— ignescunt iræ auris dolor ossibus ardet. Milton, describing Satan in Hell, says, "With head uplift above the wave, and eye "He spake and to confirm his words out flew Milions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs Of mighty cherubim. The sudden blaze • Far round illumin'd Hell—” There are certain words in every language particularly adapted to the poetical expression; some from the image or idea they con- "Ite meæ, At ease reclin'd beneath the verdant shade, Here the word pendere wonderfully improves the landscape, and renders the whole passage beautifully picturesque. The same figurative verb we meet with in many different parts of the Æneid. "Hi summo in fluctu pendent, his unda dehiscens These on the mountain billow hung; to those The yawning waves the yellow sand disclose." In this instance, the words pendent and dehiscens, hung and yawning, are equally poetical. Addison seems to have had this passage in his eye, when he wrote his Hymn, which is inserted in the Spectator: And in another piece of a like nature, in the same collection: "Thy providence my life sustain'd And all my wants redress'd, |