be. Such incongruities offend propriety; though I know ingenious persons have endeavoured to excuse them, by saying, that they add a variety of imagery to the piece. This practice is even defended by a passage in Horace:

Et sermone opus est modo tristi, sæpe jocoso,
Defendente vicem modo rhetoris atque poetæ,
Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque
Extenuantis eas consulto.

But this judicious remark is, I apprehend, confined to ethic and preceptive kinds of writing, which stand in need of being enlivened with lighter images, and sportive thoughts; and where strictures on common life may more gracefully be inserted. But in the higher kinds of poesy, they appear as unnatural, and out of place, as one of the burlesque scenes of Heemskirk would do in a solemn landscape of Poussin. When I see such a line as

"And at each blast a lady's honour dies,”

in the TEMPLE of FAME, I lament as much to find it placed there, as to see shops, and sheds,

1

and.

AND WRITINGS OF POPE.

393

and cottages, erected among the ruins of Dioclesian's Baths.

On the revival of literature, the first writers seemed not to have observed any SELECTION in their thoughts and images. Dante, Petrarch, Boccace, Ariosto, make very sudden transitions from the sublime to the ridiculous. Chaucer, in his Temple of Mars, among many pathetic pictures, has brought in a strange line,

The coke is scalded for all his long ladell.*

No writer has more religiously observed the decorum here recommended than Virgil.

22. This having heard and seen, some pow'r unknown, Strait chang'd the scene, and snatch'd me from the throne; Before my view appear'd a structure fair,

Its site uncertain, if in earth or air.†

The scene here changes from the TEMPLE of FAME to that of Rumour. Such a change is not

VOL. I.

D d

methinks

*Thus again;

"As Esop's dogs contending for a bone;"—and many others.

+ Ver. 417.

methinks judicious, as it destroys the unity of the subject, and distracts the view of the reader; not to mention, that the difference between Rumour and Fame is not sufficiently distinct and perceptible. POPE has, however, the merit of compressing the sense of a great number of Chaucer's lines into a small compass. As Chaucer takes every opportunity of satyrizing the follies of his age, he has in this part introduced many circumstances, which it was prudent in POPE to omit, as they would not have been either relished or understood in the present times.

23. While thus I stood intent to see and hear,

One came, methought, and whisper'd in my ear,
What could thus high thy rash ambition raise ?
Art thou, fond youth, a candidate for praise?
'Tis true, (said I,) not void of hopes I came,
For who so fond as youthful bards, of Fame ?*

This conclusion is not copied from Chaucer, and is judicious. Chaucer has finished his story inartificially, by saying he was surprised at the sight of a man of great authority, and awoke in a fright. The succeeding lines give a pleasing moral

* Ver. 496.

moral to the allegory; and the two last shew the man of honour and virtue, as well as the poet :

Unblemish'd let me live, or die unknown:

Oh grant an honest fame, or grant me none !

In finishing this Section, we may observe, that POPE's alterations of Chaucer are introduced with judgment and art; that these alterations are more in number, and more important in conduct, than any Dryden has made of the same author. This piece was communicated to Steele, who entertained a high opinion of its beauties, and who conveyed it to Addison. POPE had ornamented the poem with the machinery of guardian angels, which he afterwards omitted. He speaks of his work with a diffidence uncommon in a young poet, and which does him credit.* "No errors (says he to Steele) are so trivial, but they deserve to be mended. I could point to you several; but it is my business to be informed of those faults I do not know; and as for those I do, not to talk of them, but mend them. I am afraid of nothing so much, as to

* Vol. VII. Letters, 8vo. p. 248.

impose

impose any thing upon the world which is unworthy its acceptance.".

It would have been matter of curiosity to have known Addison's sentiments of this vision.* His own is introduced, and carried on, with that vein of propriety and poetry, for which this species of his writings is so justly celebrated, and which contribute to place him at the head of allegorical writers, scarce excepting Plato himself.

* See Tatler, No. 81, referred to above.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

Printed by Thomas Maiden, Sherbourn Lane.