ftance to it furprizes his reader with a seeming contradiction. I should not have dwelt so long on. this instance, had it not been so frequent in Ovid, who is the greatest admirer of this mixt wit of all the ancients, as our Cowley is among the moderns. Homer, Virgil, Horace, and the greatest Poets, fcorned it; as indeed it is only fit for Epigram, and little copies of verses: one would wonder therefore how fo fublime a genius as Milton could fometimes fall into it, in fuch a work as an Epic Poem. But we must attribute it to his humouring the vicious taste of the age he lived in, and the falfe judgment of our unlearned English readers in general, who have few of them a relish of the more masculine and noble beauties of Poetry. FAB. VI. Ovid feems particularly pleased with the fubject of this ftory, but has notoriously fallen into a fault he is often taxed with, of not knowing when he has faid enough, by his endeavouring to excel. How has he turned and twisted that one thought of Narciffus's being the perfon beloved, and the lover too? "Cunctaque miratur quibus eft mirabilis ipfe. "Dumque petit petitur, pariterque incendit et ardet, "Perque oculos perit ipfe fuos "Uror amore mei, flammas moveoque feroque, &c." But we cannot meet with a better inftance of the extravagance and wantonnefs of Ovid's fancy, than in that particular circumftance at the end of the ftory, of Narciffus's gazing on his face after death in the Stygian waters. The defign was very bold, of making a boy fall in love with himself here on earth; but to torture him with the fame paffion after death, and not to let his ghost rest in quiet, was intolerably cruel and uncharitable. P. 164. 1. 12. But whilft within, &c.] “Dumque' "fitim fedare cupit fitis altera crevit." We have here a touch of that mixed wit I have before spoken of; but I think the measure of pun in it out-weighs the true wit; for if we exprefs the thought in' other words the turn is almoft loft. This paffage of Narciffus probably gave Milton the hint of applying it to Eve, though I think her surprize, at the fight of her own face in the water, far more just and natural than this of Narciffus. She was a raw unexperienced being, just created, and therefore might eafily be fubject to the delufion; but Narciffus had been in the world fixteen years, was brother and fon to the water-nymphs, and therefore to be fuppofed converfant with fountains long before this fatal mistake. P. 165. 1. 12. You trees, fays he, &c.] Ovid is very juftly celebrated for the paffionate speeches of his Poem. They have generally abundance of nature in them, but I leave it to better judgments to confider whether they are not often too witty and too tedious. The Poet never cares for fmothering a good thought that comes in his way, and never thinks he can draw tears enough from his reader: by which means our grief is either diverted or spent before we come to his conclufion; for we cannot at the fame time be delighted with the wit of the Poet, and concerned for the person that fpeaks it; and a great Critic has admirably well obferved, "Lamentationes debent effe breves et "concifæ, nam lacryma fubitò excrefcit, et difficile "et Auditorem vel Lectorem in fummo animi af"fectu diu tenere." Would any one in Narciffus's condition have cried out. 66 Inopem me copia "fecit?" Or can any thing be more unnatural than to turn off from his forrows for the fake of a pretty reflexion? "O utinam noftro fecedere corpore poffem! "Votum in amante novum; vellem, quod amamus, abeffet." None, I fuppofe, can be much grieved for one that is fo witty on his own afflictions. But I think we may every where observe in Ovid, that he employs his invention more than his judgment; and fpeaks all the ingenious things that can be faid on the fubject, rather than those which are particularly proper to the perfon and circumstances of the speaker. FAB. VII. P. 169. 1. 25. When Pentheus thus] There is a great deal of spirit and fire in this speech of Pentheus, but I believe none befide Ovid would have thought of the transformation of the ferpent's teeth for an incitement to the Thebans courage, when he defires them not to degenerate from their great forefather the Dragon, and draws a parallel between the behaviour of them both. "Efte, precor, memores, quâ fitis ftirpe creati, FA B. VIII. The ftory of Acœtes has abundance of nature in all the parts of it, as well in the description of his own parentage and employment, as in that of the failors characters and manners. But the short fpeeches fcattered up and down in it, which make the Latin very natural, cannot appear fo well in our language, which is much more stubborn and unpliant; and therefore are but as fo many rubs in the story, that are still turning the narration out of its proper courfe. The transformation at the latter end is wonderfully beautiful. FA B. IX. Ovid has two very good fimilies on Pentheus, where he compares him to a river in a former story, and to a war-horse in the present. AN ESSAY ON VIRGIL's GEORGICS. VIRGIL may be reckoned the first who intro duced three new kinds of poetry among the Romans, which he copied after three of the greatest masters of Greece: Theocritus and Homer have ftill difputed for the advantage over him in Pastoral and Heroics, but I think all are unanimous in giving him the precedence to Hefiod in his Georgics. The truth of it is, the sweetness and rufticity of a Paftoral cannot be fo well expreffed in any other tongue as in the Greek, when rightly mixed and qualified with the Doric dialect; nor can the majesty of an heroic poem any where appear fo well as in this language, which has a natural greatnefs in it, and can be often rendered more deep and fonorous by the pronunciation of the Ionians. But in the middle ftyle, where the writers in both tongues are on a level, we see how far Virgil has excelled all who have written in the fame way with him. There has been abundance of criticism spent on Virgil's Paftorals and Æneids; but the Georgics are a fubject which none of the critics have sufficiently taken into their confideration; most of them paffing it over in filence, or cafting it under the |