knowledge, they breathe the true fpirit of poetry: and I must own myself at a lofs which to prefer upon the whole; tho' I think Mr. Pope is evidently fuperior to his rival in his manner of opening the defcription:

At ev ning thro' the shore difpers'd they fleep,
Hufb'd by the diftant roarings of the deep.
When now, afcending from the fhades of night,
Aurora glow'd in all her rofy light,

The daughter of the dawn: th' awaken'd crew
Back to the Greeks encamp'd their course renew;
The breezes freshen; for with friendly gales
Apollo fwell'd their wide-diftended fails ;
Cleft by the rapid prow the waves divide,
And in hoarse murmurs break on either fide.

TICKEL.

'Twas night; the chiefs befide their vessel lie,
Till rofy morn had purpled o'er the sky:
Then launch, and hoift the maft; indulgent gales,
Supply'd by Phoebus, fill the fwelling fails;
The milk-white canvass bellying as they blow,
The parted ocean foams and roars below:
Above the bounding billows fwift they flew,
Till now the Grecian camp appear'd in view.

POPE.

[At fun-fet to their fhip they make return,
And fnore fecure on decks, till rofy morn.
The fkies with dawning day were purpled o'er,
Awak'd, with lab'ring oars they leave the fhore:
The pow'r appeas'd, with winds fuffic'd the fail,
The bellying canvass frutted with the gale ;

The

The waves indignant roar with furly pride,
And prefs against the fides, and, beaten off, divide.
They cut the foamy way, with force impell'd
Superior, till the Trojan port they held:
Then hauling on the ftrand their gally 'moor,
And pitch their tents along the crooked shore. ›
DRYDEN.]

There is fomething wonderfully pleafing in that judicious paufe, which Mr. Pope has placed at the beginning of these lines. It neceffarily awakens the attention of the reader, and gives a much greater air of folemnity to the fcene, than if the circumftance of the time had been lefs diftinctly pointed out, and blended, as in Mr. Tickel's tranflation, with the rest of the description.

Homer has been celebrated by antiquity, for those sublime images of the fupream being, which he so often raises in the Iliad. It is Macrobius, if I remember right, who informs us, that Phidias being afked from whence he took the Idea of his celebrated ftatue of Olympian Jupiter, acknowleged that he had heated his imagination by the following lines:

Η, και κυανέησιν επ' οφρυσι νευσε Κρονίων

Αμβροσίας δ' άρα χαιται επερρώσαντο άνακτος,

Κρατά απ' αθανατοιο μεγαν δ' ελελιξεν ολυμπον.

B. I. 528.

But whatever. magnificence of imagery Phidias might difcover in the original, the English reader will scarce, I imagine, conceive any thing very grand and fublime from the following copy:

This faid, his kingly brow the fire inclin'd,
The large black curls fell awful from behind,
Thick fhadowing the stern forehead of the god:
Olympus trembled at th' almighty nod.

TICKEL.

That our modern ftatuaries, however, may not have an excufe for burlesquing the figure of the great father of the gods and men, for want of the benefit of so animating a model; Mr. Pope has preserved it to them in all its original majefty:

He fpoke, and awful bends &c. fee p. 18. of this Vol.
[Go then, and on the faith of Jove rely;

When nodding to thy fuit, he bows the sky.
This ratifies th' irrevocable doom;

The fign ordain'd, that what I will fhall come:
The ftamp of heav'n, and feal of Fate. He faid,
And Shook the facred honors of his head.
With terror trembled heav'ns fubfiding hill;

And from his fhaken curls ambrofial dews diftil.

[DRYDEN.]

I took occafion in a former letter to make some exceptions to a paffage or two in the parting of Hector and Andromache, as tranflated by your favorite poet: I fhall now produce a few lines from the fame beautiful epifode for another purpose, and in order to fhew, with how much more mafterly a hand, even than Dryden himfelf, our great improver of English poetry has worked upon the fame fubject. As Andromache is going to the tower of Ilion, in order to take a view of the field of battle, Hector meets her, together

gether with her fon the young Aftyanax, at the Scaan gate. The circumftances of this fudden interview are finely imagined. Hector in the firft tranfport of his joy is unable to utter a fingle word, at the fame time that Andromache tenderly embracing his hands, burft out into a flood of tears:

Hos & perv padnou &c. fee p. 56. of the Gr. Vol. Dryden has tranflated this paffage with a cold and unpoetical Adelity to the mere letter of the original:

Hector beheld him with a filent fmile,

His tender wife flood weeping by the while,
Prefs'd in her own his warlike hand she took,
Then figh'd, and thus prophetically spoke.

But Pope has judiciously taken a larger compafs, and by heightning the piece with a few additional touches, has wrought it up in all the affecting fpirit of tenderness and poetry:

Silent the warrior fmil'd, &c. fee p. 74. of this Vol. Andromache afterwards. endeavors to perfuade Hector to take upon himfelf the defence of the city, and not hazard a life fo important, fhe tells him, to herself and his fon, in the more dangerous action of the field:

The d'ails women &c. fee p. 57. of the Gr. Vol.

To whom the noble Hector thus reply'd:

That and the reft are in my daily care;

But fhould I fhun the dangers of the war,
With fcorn the Trojans would reward my pains,
And their proud ladies with their fweeping trains.
The Grecian fwords and lances I can bear ;
But lofs of honor is my only care. DRYDEN.

Nothing

Nothing can be more flat and unanimated than thefe lines. One may lay upon this occafion, what Dryden himself, I remember fomewhere obferves, that a good poet is no more like himself in a dull tranflation, than his dead carcafe would be to his living body. To catch indeed the foul of our Gres cian bard, and breath his fpirit into an English version, seems to have been a privilege referved folely for Pope:

The chief reply'd, &c. fee p. 76. of this Vol.

In the farther profecution of this epifode Hector prophefies his own death, and the destruction of Troy; to which he adds, that Andromache fhould be led captive into Argos, where, among other difgraceful offices, which he particulatly enumerates, the fhould be employed, he tells her, in the fervile task of drawing water. The different manner in which this laft circumftance is expreffed by our English poets, will afford the ftrongest inftance, how much additional force the fame thought will receive from a more graceful turo of phrase:

Or from deep wells the living fiream to take,
And on thy weary fhoulders bring it back.

or bring

DRYDEN.

The weight of waters from Hyperia's fpring.

It is in certain peculiar turns of diction that the language of poetry is 'principally distinguished from that of profe; as indeed the fame words are, in general, common to them both. It is in a turn of this kind, that the beauty of the last quoted line confifts. For the whole grace of the expreffion would vanish, if, instead of the two fubftantives which are