metaphorically on the other; and if there be any language which does not express intellectual operations by material images, into that language they cannot be translated; but so much meaning is comprised in so few words; the particulars of resemblance are so perspicaciously collected, and every mode of excellence separated from its adjacent fault by so nice a line of limitation; the different parts of the sentence are so accurately adjusted, and the flow of the last couplet is so smooth and sweet, that the passage, howeyer celebrated, has not been praised above its merit. It has beauty peculiar to itself, and must be numbered among those felicities which cannot be produced at will by wit and labour, but must arise unexpectedly in some hour propitious to poetry.

Sir John Denham appears to have been one of the first that understood the necessity of emancipating translation from the drudgery of counting lines, and interpreting single words. How much this servile practice obscured the clearest, and deformed the most beautiful parts of the ancient authors, may be discovered by a perusal of our earlier versions; some of them the works of men well qualified not only by critical knowledge, but by poetical genius, who yet, by a mistaken ambition of exactness, degraded at once their originals and themselves.

Denham saw the better way, but has not pursued it with great success. His versions of Virgil are not pleasing, but they taught Dryden to please better. His poetical imitation of Tully on Old Age has neither the clearness of prose nor the sprightliness of poetry. The strength of Denham, which Pope so emphatically mentions, is to be found in many lines and couplets, which convey much meaning in few words, and exhibit the sentiment with more weight than bulk.

ON THE THAMES.

Tho' with those streams he no resemblance hold,
Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold,
His genuine and less guilty wealth t'explore,
Search not his oottom, but survey his shore,

ON STRAFFORD,

His wisdom such, at once it did appear

Three kingdoms' wonder and three kingdoms fear;
Whilst single he stood forth, and seem'd, altho
Each had an army, as an equal foe.

Such was his force of eloquence, to make
The bearers more concern'd than he that spake.
Each sçem'd to act that part he came to see,
And none was more a looker-on than hẹ.
So did he move our passions, some were known
To wish, for the defence, the crime their own,
Now private pity strove with public hate,
Reason with rage, and eloquence with fate.

ON COWLEY.

To him no author was unknown,
Yet what he wrote was all his own,
Horace's wit, and Virgil's state
He did not steal, but emulate;
And when he would like them appear,
Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear.

As one of Denham's principal claims to the regard of posterity arises from his improvement of our numbers, his versification ought to be considered: it will afford that pleasure which arises from the observation of a man of right natural judgment forsaking bad copies by degrees, and advancing towards a better practice as he gains more confidence in himself.

In his translation of Virgil, written when he was about twenty-one years old, may be still found the old manner of continuing the sense ungracefully from verse to verse.

Then all those

Who in the dark our fury did escape,
Returning, know our borrow'd arms and shape,
And diff'ring dialect: then their numbers swell
And grow upon us. First Choroebus fell
Before Minerva's altar: next did bleed
Just Repheus, whom no Trojan did exceed.
In virtue, yet the gods his fate decreed.
Then Hypanis and Dymas, wounded by
Their friends: nor thee, Pantheus, thy piety,
Nor consecrated mitre, from the same
Ill fate could save. My country's funeral flame,
And Troy's cold ashes, I attest and call
To witness for myself, that in their fall
No foes, no death, nor danger, I declin'd,
Did and deserv'd. no less my fate to find.

}

From this kind of concatenated metre he afterwards refrained, and taught his followers the art of concluding their sense in couplets, which has perhaps been with rather too much constancy pursuea.

This passage exhibits one of those triplets which are not unfrequent in this first essay, but which, it is to be supposed, his maturer judgment disapproved, since in his latter works he has totally forborne them.

His rhymes are such as seem found without difficulty by following the sense, and are, for the most part, as exact at least, as those of other poets, though now and then the reader is shifted off with what he can get.

-------Oh how transform'd!

How much unlike that Hector who return'd
Clad in Achilles' spoils!.....

And again,

From thence a thousand lesser poets sprung,
Like petty princes from the fall of Rome.

Sometimes the weight of rhyme is laid upon a

word too feeble to sustain it.

-------Troy confounded falls

From all her glories: if it might have stood
By any power by this right hand it should.
----And tho' my outward state misfortune hath
Depress'd thus low, it cannot reach my faith.
----Thus by his fraud, and our own faith o'ercome,
A feigned tear destroys us, against whom
Tydides nor Achilles could prevail
Nor ten years conflict, nor a thousand sail.

He is not very careful to vary the ends of his verses: in one passage the word die rhymes three couplets in six.

Most of these petty faults are in his first productions, when he was less skilful, or at least less dexterous, in the use of words; and though they had