beginning to seize him, should turn his whole attention against it, and check it at the first discovery by proper counteraction.

There is nothing more fatal to a man whose business is to think, than to have learned the art of regaling his mind with those airy gratifications. Other vices or follies are restrained by fear, re- The great resolution to be formed, when hapformed by admonition, or rejected by the convic- piness and virtue are thus formidably invaded, tion which the comparison of our conduct with is, that no part of life be spent in a state of neu that of others may in time produce. But this in-trality or indifference; but that some pleasure visible riot of the mind, this secret prodigality of be found for every moment that is not devoted to being, is secure from detection, and fearless of labour; and that, whenever the necessary busi reproach. The dreamer retires to his apart-ness of life grows irksome or disgusting, an imments, shuts out the cares and interruptions of mediate transition be made to diversion and mankind, and abandons himself to his own fancy; gayety. new worlds rise up before him, one image is followed by another, and a long succession of delights dances round him. He is at last called back to life by nature, or by custom, and enters peevish into society, because he cannot model it to his own will. He returns from his idle excursions with the asperity, though not with the knowledge, of a student, and hastens again to the same felicity with the eagerness of a man bent upon the advancement of some favourite science. The infatuation strengthens by degrees, and, like the poison of opiates, weakens his powers, without any external symptom of malignity.

After the exercises which the health of the body requires, and which have themselves a natural tendency to actuate and invigorate the mind, the most eligible amusement of a rational being seems to be that interchange of thoughts which is practised in free and easy conversation; where suspicion is banished by experience, and emulation by benevolence; where every man speaks with no other restraint than unwillingness to of fend, and hears with no other disposition than desire to be pleased.

There must be a time in which every man trifles; and the only choice that nature offers us, is, to trifle in company or alone. To join profit with pleasure, has been an old precept among men who have had very different conceptions of profit. All have agreed that our amusements should not terminate wholly in the present moment, but contribute more or less to future advantage. He that amuses himself among well chosen companions, can scarcely fail to receive, from the most careless and obstreperous merri

It happens, indeed, that these hypocrites of learning are in time detected, and convinced by disgrace and disappointment of the difference between the labour of thought, and the sport of musing. But this discovery is often not made till it is too late to recover the time that has been fooled away. A thousand accidents may indeed, awaken drones to a more early sense of their danger and their shame. But they who are con-ment which virtue can allow, some useful hints; vinced of the necessity of breaking from this habitual drowsiness, too often relapse in spite of their resolution; for these ideal seducers are always near, and neither any particularity of time nor place is necessary to their influence; they invade the soul without warning, and have often charmed down resistance before their approach is perceived or suspected.

This captivity, however, it is necessary for every man to break, who has any desire to be wise or useful, to pass his life with the esteem of others, or to look back with satisfaction from his old age upon his earlier years. In order to regain liberty, he must find the means of flying from himself; he must, in opposition to the stoic precept, teach his desires to fix upon eternal things; he must adopt the joys and the pains of others, and excite in his mind the want of social pleasures and amicable communication.

It is, perhaps, not impossible to promote the cure of this mental malady, by close application to some new study, which may pour in fresh ideas, and keep curiosity in perpetual motion. But study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves. Active employment or public pleasure is generally a necessary part of this intellectual regimen, without which, though some remission may be obtained, a complete cure will scarcely be effected.

This is a formidable and obstinate disease of the intellect, of which, when it has once become radicated by time, the remedy is one of the hardest tasks of reason and of virtue. Its slightest attacks therefore, should be watchfully opposed; and he that finds the frigid and narcotic infection

nor can converse on the most familiar topics, without some casual information. The loose sparkles of thoughtless wit may give new light to the mind, and the gay contention for paradoxical positions rectify the opinions.

This is the time in which those friendships that give happiness or consolation, relief or security, are generally formed. A wise and good man is never so amiable as in his unbended and familiar intervals. Heroic generosity, or philosophical discoveries, may compel veneration and respect, but love always implies some kind of natural or voluntary equality, and is only to be excited by that levity and cheerfulness which disencumber all minds from awe and solitude, invite the mo dest to freedom, and exalt the timorous to confi dence. This easy gayety is certain to please, whatever be the character of him that exerts it; if our superiors descend from their elevation, we love them for lessening the distance at which we are placed below them; and inferiors, from whom we can receive no lasting advantage, will always keep our affections while their sprightliness and mirth contribute to our pleasure.

Every man finds himself differently affected by the sight of fortresses of war, and palaces of pleasure; we look on the height and strength of the bulwarks with a kind of gloomy satisfaction, for we cannot think of defence without admitting images of danger; but we range delighted and jocund through the gay apartments of the palace, because nothing is impressed by them on the mind but joy and festivity. Such is the difference between great and amiable characters; with protectors we are safe, with companions we are happy.

In tenui labor.

What toil in slender things!

VIRG.

143

hexameter might be easily observed, but in English will very frequently be in danger of viola tion; for the order and regularity of accents cannot well be perceived in a succession of fewer than three syllables, which will confine the English poet to only five pauses; it being supposed that when he connects one line with another, he should never make a full pause at less distance than that of three syllables from the beginning or end of a verse.

Ir is very difficult to write on the minuter parts of literature without failing either to please or instruct. Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down That this rule should be universally and inrules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use. They who under-dispensably established, perhaps cannot be take these subjects are therefore always in dan- granted; something may be allowed to variety, ger, as one or other inconvenience arises to their and something to the adaptation of the numbers imagination, of frighting us with rugged science, to the subject; but it will be found generally necessary, and the ear will seldom fail to suffer or amusing us with empty sound. by its neglect.

In criticising the work of Milton, there is, indeed, opportunity to intersperse passages that can hardly fail to relieve the languors of attention; and since, in examining the variety and choice of the pauses with which he has diversified his numbers, it will be necessary to exhibit the lines in which they are to be found, perhaps the remarks may be well compensated by the examples, and the irksomeness of grammatical disquisitions somewhat alleviated. Milton formed his scheme of versification by the poets of Greece and Rome, whom he proposed to himself for his models, so far as the difference of his language from theirs would permit the imitation. There are indeed many inconveniences inseparable from our heroic measure compared with that of Homer and Virgil; inconveniences, which it is no reproach to Milton not to have overcome, because they are in their own nature insupera ble; but against which he has struggled with so much art and diligence, that he may at least be said to have deserved success.

The hexameter of the ancients may be considered as consisting of fifteen syllables, so melodiously disposed, that, as every one knows who has examined the poetical authors, very pleas ing and sonorous lyric measures are formed from the fragments of the heroic. It is, indeed, scarce possible to break them in such a manner, but that invenias etiam disjecta membra poeta, some harmony will still remain, and the due proportions of sound will always be discovered. This measure therefore allowed great variety of pauses, and great liberties of connecting one verse with another, because wherever the line was interrupted, either part singly was musical. But the ancients seem to have confined this privilege to hexameters; for in their other mea. sures, though longer than the English heroic, those who wrote after the refinements of versification, venture so seldom to change their pauses, that every variation may be supposed rather a compliance with necessity than the choice of judgment.

Milton was constrained within the narrow limits of a measure not very harmonious in the utmost perfection; the single parts, therefore, into which it was to be sometimes broken by pauses, were in danger of losing the very form of verse. This has, perhaps, notwithstanding all his care, sometimes happened.

As harmony is the end of poetical measures, no part of a verse ought to be so separated from the rest as not to remain still more harmonious than prose, or to show, by the disposition of the tones, that it is part of a verse. This rule in the old

Thus when a single syllable is cut off from the rest, it must either be united to the line with which the sense connects it, or be sounded alone. If it be united to the other line, it corrupts its har mony; if disjoined, it must stand alone, and with regard to music be superfluous; for there is no harmony in a single sound, because it has no proportion to another.

-Hypocrites austerely talk;
Defaming as impure what God declares

Pure; and commands to some, leaves free to all.

When two syllables likewise are abscinded
from the rest, they evidently want some associ
ate sounds to make them harmonious.
-Eyes-

-more wakeful than to drowse,
Charm'd with Arcadian pipe, the past'ral reed
Of Hermes, or his opiate rod. Meanwhile
To re-salute the world with sacred light
Leucothea waked.

He ended, and the Son gave signal high
To the bright minister that watch'd: he blew
His trumpet.

First in the east his glorious lamp was seen,
Regent of day; and all th' horizon round
Invested with bright rays, jocund to run
His longitude through heaven's high road; the gray
Dawn, and the Pleiades, before him danced,
Shedding sweet influence.

The same defect is perceived in the following line, where the pause is at the second syllable from the beginning

The rest in the fifth place has the same inconvenience as in the seventh and third, that the syl-vened, in which it was resolved, that Patronage lable is weak.

If the poetry of Milton be examined, with regard to the pauses and flow of his verses into In time, however, the number of those who each other, it will appear that he has performed had miscarried in their pretensions grew so great, all that our language would admit; and the com- that they became less ashamed of their repulses ; parison of his numbers with those who have cul- and, instead of hiding their disgrace in retiretivated the same manner of writing, will show ment, began to besiege the gates of the palace, that he excelled as much in the lower as the and obstruct the entrance of such as they thought higher parts of his art, and that his skill in har-likely to be more caressed. The decisions of mony was not less than his invention or his Patronage, who was but half a goddess, had learning been sometimes erroneous; and though she al

ways made haste to rectify her mistakes, a few instances of her fallibility encouraged every one to appeal from her judgment to his own, and that of his companions, who are always ready to clamour in the common cause, and elate each other with reciprocal applause.

competitors. Infamy flew round the hall, and scattered mildews from her wings, with which every one was stained; Reputation followed her with slower flight, and endeavoured to hide the blemishes with paint, which was immediately brushed away, or separated of itself, and left the stains more visible; nor were the spots of Infamy ever effaced, but with limpid water effused by the hand of Time from a well which sprung up beneath the throne of Truth.

Hope was a steady friend to the disappointed, and Impudence incited them to accept a second invitation, and lay their claim again before Patronage. They were again, for the most part, sent back with ignominy, but found hope not It frequently happened that Science, unwill alienated, and Impudence more resolutely zeal-ing to lose the ancient prerogative of recom ous; they therefore contrived new expedients, mending to Patronage, would lead her followers and hoped at last to prevail by their multitudes, into the Hall of Expectation; but they were soon which were always increasing, and their perse-discouraged from attending; for not only Envy verance, which Hope and Impudence forbade and Suspicion incessantly tormented them, but Impudence considered them as intruders, and incited Infamy to blacken them. They therefore quickly retired, but seldom without some spots which they could scarcely wash away, and which showed that they had once waited in the Hall of Expectation.

them to relax.

Patronage having been long a stranger to the heavenly assemblies, began to degenerate towards terrestrial nature, and forgot the precepts of Justice and Truth. Instead of confining her friendship to the Sciences, she suffered herself, by little and little, to contract an acquaintance with Pride the son of Falsehood, by whose embraces she had two daughters, Flattery and Caprice. Flattery was nursed by Liberality, and Caprice by Fortune, without any assistance from the lessons of the Sciences.

The rest continued to expect the happy mo ment, at which Caprice should beckon them to approach; and endeavoured to propitiate her, not with Homerical harmony, the representation of great actions, or the recital of noble sentiments, but with soft and voluptuous melody, intermingled with the praises of Patronage and Pride, by whom they were heard at once with pleasure and contempt.

Patronage began openly to adopt the sentiments and imitate the manners of her husband, by whose opinions she now directed her decisions with very little heed to the precepts of Some were indeed admitted by Caprice, when Truth; and as her daughters continually gained they least expected it, and heaped by Patronage upon her affections, the Sciences lost their influ- with the gifts of Fortune; but they were from ence, till none found much reason to boast of that time chained to her footstool, and condemn their reception, but those whom Caprice or Flat-ed to regulate their lives by her glances and her tery conducted to her throne.

The throngs who had so long waited, and so often been dismissed for want of recommenda tion from the Sciences, were delighted to see the power of those rigorous goddesses tending to its extinction. Their patronesses now renewed their encouragements. Hope smiled at the approach of Caprice, and Impudence was always at hand to introduce her clients to Flattery.

nods; they seemed proud of their manacles, and seldom complained of any drudgery however servile, or any affront however contemptuous; yet they were often, notwithstanding their obedi ence, seized on a sudden by Caprice, divested of their ornaments, and thrust back into the Hall of Expectation.

Here they mingled again with the tumult, and all, except a few whom experience had taught to seek happiness in the regions of liberty, continued to spend hours, and days and years, courting the smile of Caprice by the arts of Flattery; till at length new crowds pressed in upon them, and drove them forth at different outlets into the habitations of Disease, and Shame, and Poverty, and Despair, where they passed the rest of their lives in narratives of promises and breaches of faith, of joys and sorrows, of hopes and disap

Patronage had now learned to procure herself reverence by ceremonies and formalities, and, instead of admitting her petitioners to an immediate audience, ordered the antechamber to be erected, called among mortals the Hall of Expectation. Into this hall the entrance was easy to those whom Impudence had consigned to Flattery, and it was therefore crowded with a promiscuous throng, assembled from every corner of the earth, pressing forward with the ut-pointments. most eagerness of desire, and agitated with all the anxieties of competition.

No. 92.] SATURDAY, Feb. 2, 1751.

The Sciences, after a thousand indignities, retired from the palace of Patronage, and having They entered this general receptacle with ar- long wandered over the world in grief and dis dour and alacrity, and made no doubt of speedy tress, were led at last to the cottage of Independ access, under the conduct of Flattery, to the pre-ence, the daughter of Fortitude; where they sence of Patronage. But it generally happened were taught by Prudence and Parsimony to sup that they were here left to their destiny, for the port themselves in dignity and quiet. inner doors were committed to Caprice, who opened and shut them, as it seemed, by chance, and rejected or admitted without any settled rule of distinction. In the mean time, the miserable attendants were left to wear out their lives in alternate exultation and dejection, delivered up to the sport of Suspicion, who was always whispering into their ear designs against them which were never formed, and of Envy, who diligently point- Ir has been long observed, that the idea of beau ed out the good fortune of one or other of their ty is vague and undefined, different in different

Jam nunc minaci murmure cornuum
Perstringis aures, jam litui strepunt.
Lo! now the clarion's voice I hear,
Its threatening murmurs pierce my ear,
And in thy lines with brazen breath
The trumpet sounds the charge of death.

HOR

FRANCIS.

T

minds, and diversified by time or place. It has the contrary, brevity, speed, and eagerness, are been a term hitherto used to signify that which evidently marked out by the sound of the syllapleases us we know not why, and in our appro-bles. Thus the anguish and slow pace with bation of which we can justify ourselves only by which the blind Polypheme groped out with his the concurrence of numbers, without much power hands the entrance of his cave, are perceived in of enforcing our opinion upon others by any ar- the cadence of the verses which describe it. gument, but example and authority. It is, indeed, so little subject to the examinations of reason, that Paschal supposes it to end where demonstration begins, and maintains, that without incongruity and absurdity we cannot speak of geometrical beauty.

Κύκλωψ δὲ στενάχων τε καὶ ὠδίνων ὀδίνῃσι,
Χερσὶ ψηλαφόων

Meantime the Cyclop raging with his wound,
Spreads his wide arms, and searches round and round.

POPE.

To trace all the sources of that various pleasure which we ascribe to the agency of beauty, or to disentangle all the perceptions involved in its idea, would, perhaps, require a very great part of the life of Aristotle or Plato. It is, however, in many cases apparent that this quality is mere-feet, and the strength of the consonants. ly relative and comparative; that we pronounce things beautiful because they have something which we agree, for whatever reason, to call beauty, in a greater degree than we have been accustomed to find it in other things of the same kind; and that we transfer the epithet as our knowledge increases, and appropriate it to higher excellence, when higher excellence comes within our view.

The critic then proceeds to show, that the ef forts of Achilles struggling in his armour against the current of a river, sometimes resisting, and sometimes yielding, may be perceived in the elisions of the syllables, the slow succession of the

Much of the beauty of writing is of this kind, and therefore Boileau justly remarks, that the books which have stood the test of time, and been admired through all the changes which the mind of man has suffered from the various revolutions of knowledge, and the prevalence of contrary customs, have a better claim to our regard than any modern can boast, because the long continuance of their reputation proves that they are adequate to our faculties, and agreeable to nature.

It is, however, the task of criticism to establish principles; to improve opinion into knowledge; and to distinguish those means of pleasing which depend upon known causes and rational deduction, from the nameless and inexplicable elegancies which appeal only to the fancy, from which we feel delight, but know not how they produce it, and which may well be termed the enchantress of the soul. Criticism reduces those regions of literature under the dominion of science, which have hitherto known only the anarchy of ignorance, the caprices of fancy, and the tyranny of prescription.

Δεῖνον δ' ἀμφ' Αχιλήα κυκώμενον ἵστατο κύμα,
*Ωθει δ' ἐν σάκεϊ πίπτων ρόος· οὐδὲ πόδεσσιν
Έσκε στηρίξασθαι.

So oft the surge, in watery mountains spread,
Beats on his back, or bursts upon his head;
Yet, dauntless still. the adverse flood he braves,
And still indignaut bounds above the waves,
Tired by the tides, his knees relax with toil;
Wash'd from beneath him, slides the slimy soil.

POPE.

When Homer describes the crush of men dashed against a rock, he collects the most unpleasing and harsh sounds.

Σὺν δὲ δύω μάρψας, ὥστε σκύλακας ποτέ γαιη
Κόπτ· ἐκ δ' ἐγκέφαλος χαμάδις ρέε, δεῦς δὲ γαλαν.

-His bloody hand

Snatch'd two, unhappy! of my martial band,
And dash'd like dogs against the stony floor;
The pavement swims with brains and mingled gore.

POPE.

And when he would place before the eyes something dreadful and astonishing, he makes choice of the strongest vowels, and the letters of most

difficult utterance.

Τὴ δ' ἐπὶ Γοργὼ βλοσυρῶπις ἐστεφάνωτο
Δεινὸν δερκομένη περὶ δε Δείμος τε φόβος τε.
Tremendous Gorgon frown'd upon its field,
And circling terrors fill'd th' expressive shield.

POPE.

Many other examples Dionysius produces; There is nothing in the art of versifying so but these will sufficiently show, that either he much exposed to the power of imagination as the was fanciful, or we have lost the genuine proaccommodation of the sound to the sense, or the nunciation; for I know not whether, in any one representation of particular images, by the flow of these instances, such similitude can be dis of the verse in which they are expressed. Every covered. It seems, indeed, probable, that the student has innumerable passages, in which he, veneration with which Homer was read, proand perhaps he alone, discovers such resem-duced many supposititious beauties; for though blances; and since the attention of the present it is certain, that the sound of many of his verses race of poetical readers seems particularly turned very justly corresponds with the things expressupon this species of elegance, I shall endeavoured, yet, when the force of his imagination, which to examine how much these conformities have been observed by the poets, or directed by the critics, how far they can be established upon nature and reason, and on what occasions they have been practised by Milton.

Homer, the father of all poetical beauty, has been particularly celebrated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as he that, of all the poets, exhibited the greatest variety of sound; "for there are, (says he,) innumerable passages, in which length of time, bulk of body, extremity of passion, and stillness of repose; or, in which, on

gave him full possession of every object, is considered, together with the flexibility of his language, of which the syllables might be often contracted or dilated at pleasure, it will seem unlikely that such conformity should happen less frequently even without design.

It is not however to be doubted, that Virgil, who wrote amidst the light of criticism, and who owed so much of his success to art and labour, endeavoured among other excellences, to exhibit this similitude; nor has he been less happy in this than in the other graces of versification.