Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

POEMS

ON

SEVERAL OCCASIONS.

VOL. I.

B

TO MR. DRYDEN.

HOW long, great poet, shall thy sacred lays
Provoke our wonder, and transcend our praise?
Can neither injuries of time, or age,

Damp thy poetick heat, and quench thy rage?
Not so thy Ovid in his exile wrote,

Grief chill'd his breast, and check'd his rising thought;
Pensive and sad, his drooping muse betrays

The Roman genius in its last decays.

Prevailing warmth has still thy mind possest,
And second youth is kindled in thy breast;
Thou mak'st the beauties of the Romans known,"
And England boasts of riches not her own;

a It would not be fair to criticise our author's poetry, especially the poetry of his younger days, very exactly. He was not a poet born: or, he had not studied, with sufficient care, the best models of English poetry. Whatever the cause might be, he had not the command of what Dryden so eminently possessed, a truly poetic diction. poetry is only pure prose, 'put into verse. And

His

"Non satis est puris versum perscribere verbis." However, it may not be amiss to point out the principal defects of his expression, that his great example may not be pleaded in excuse of them.

b

Thou makest] vide after, Thou teachest] This way of using verbs of the present and imperfect tense, in the second person singular, should be utterly banished from our poetry. The sound is intolerable. Milton and others have rather chosen to violate grammar itself, than offend the ear thus unmercifully. This liberty may, perhaps, be

Thy lines have heighten'd Virgil's majesty,
And Horace wonders at himself in thee.
Thou teachest Persius to inform our isle
In smoother numbers, and a clearer stile;
And Juvenal, instructed in thy page,
Edges his satyr, and improves his rage.
Thy copy casts a fairer light on all,
And still out-shines the bright original.

Now Ovid boasts' th' advantage of thy song,
And tells his story in the British tongue;

Thy charming verse," and fair translations, show
How thy own laurel first began to grow;
How wild Lycaon chang'd by angry gods,

And frighted at himself, ran howling through the woods.
O mayst thou still the noble task prolong,
Nor age, nor sickness interrupt thy song:
Then may we wondering read, how human limbs
Have water'd kingdoms, and dissolv'd in streams;
Of those rich fruits that on the fertile mould
Turn'd yellow by degrees, and ripen'd into gold:
How some in feathers, or a ragged hide,

Have liv'd a second life, and different natures try'd.
Then will thy Ovid, thus transform'd, reveal
A nobler change than he himself can tell.*

Mag. Coll. Oxon. June 2, 1693.

The Author's age 22.

taken sometimes, in the greater poetry; in odes especially. But the better way will generally be, to turn the expression differently: As, 'Tis thine to teach, or in some such way.

b

a th' advantage of thy song.] An instance of unpoetical expression. Thy charming verse, and fair translations.] The epithets too general and prosaic.

Alexandrines, as they are called, should never be admitted into this kind of verse. But Dryden's unconfined genius had given a

sanction to them.

O mayst thou still, &c.] See note in the preceding page. It might have stood thus: "Still may thy muse the noble task prolong."

reveal-tell.] Bad rhymes. There are other instances in this short poem; and in general Mr. Addison was a bad rhymist.

« ZurückWeiter »