English Homer quickly betrays itself*.-His crowds of bold and violent figures, which jostle one another in their turbulent birth,-his swelling fancies, and his dry, square, axioms, giving the lie, as it were, to his enthusiasm.-The usual metaphor of thoughts "flowing from the brain" can never be used in writing of Chapman's inventive process. His images and conceptions spout forth as from the crater of a volcano, hurling in the blast, at once, bright fire and dusky smoke,-live coals and dry ashes. The English language has not a more unequal poet:-one instant finds him familiar, low,-bolting inelegant conceits, and gross hyperboles; the next, soaring aloft in bardic majesty, full of true passion and vigorous feelings. In his most pathetic scenes. he suddenly strikes us into ice, with a philo

*The following allusion to Chapman's share in the present translation, occurs in "England's Mourning Garment," &c. [1606.]

"Neither doth Coryn, full of worth and wit,
That finisht dead Musæus' gracious song,

With grace as great, and words and verse as fit,
Chide meager death for doing vertue wrong."

sophical or metaphysical oracle, an apopthegmatical couplet; and he takes leave of flesh and blood, to consort with shadowy personifications and embodied abstractions. Of a piece too with his phraseology, is his versification, which is now equable, sonorous, and full; now, harsh, angular, inappropriately jaw-breaking, quaintly twisted, strangely distorted. But with all this he is a noble spirit:-" passion, the all-in-all in poetry, (to repeat an admirable criticism) is everywhere present. He makes his readers glow, weep, tremble, take any affection which he pleases, be moved by words, or in spite of them, be disgusted, and overcome their disgust." Take for example the last scene of this cutting tragedy, which is indeed struck out with a towering energy. I do not envy the feelings of that critic who can go over it unmoved, nor of "the little judge" who stops to cavil at an odd word, or extraneous syllable.-Something healing is spread over the final paragraph, which reconciles and imperceptibly harmonizes the mind. It is truly stated by Mr. Lamb, that the genius of Chapman

is epic, rather than purely dramatic. Of this, one confirmation is in Hero's sophisticating selfconsolations in the Third Sestyad, which though founded in nature, considered in the abstract, are wanting in characteristic and dramatic propriety. There are several rich pictures in old George's continuation, among which allow me to point out the following. Hero is robing for private sacrifice

"Then put she on all her religious weeds,
A crown of icicles, that sun nor fire
Could ever melt, and figur'd chaste desire.
A golden star shin'd in her naked breast
In honour of the queen-light of the east.
In her right hand she held a silver wand,
On whose bright top Peristera did stand
Who was a nymph but now, transform'd, a dove,—

*

*

*

*

*

Her plenteous hair in curled billows swims

On her bright shoulder: her harmonious limbs
Sustain'd no more but a most subtile veil,
That hung on them, as it durst not assail
Their different concord; for the weakest air
Could raise it, swelling, from her beauties fair;
Nor did it cover, but adumbrate only
Her most heart-piercing parts, that a blest eye
Might see, as it did shadow, fearfully

64

All that all-love-deserving Paradise:

It was as blue as the most freezing skies,

Near the sea's hue from thence her goddess came :
Ou it a scarf she wore of wondrous frame;
In midst whereof the wrought a virgin's face,
From whose each cheek a fiery blush did chase
Two crimson flames, that did two ways extend,
Spreading the ample scarf to either end,
Which figured the division of her mind,—

This serv'd her white neck for a purple sphere,
And cast itself at full breadth down her back.”

This is more in costume, and more classical than the rival description at the commencement of the poem, where Marlow has arrayed his "Nun of Venus" in the stiff, rustling silks, and glistering brocades worn by the plump-shouldered yellow-haired Venetian dames of Tizian, or Paris Bordone. "Enough, however, has been already said, and it may appear to some more than was altogether seemly; but there are times when it is difficult for love to restrain every expression of its admiration*."

* See preface to Mr.'s singular, enthusiastic translation of "Sintram and his Companions," by Baron la Motte Fouqué, a sublime, deeply pondered effusion of genius, in the strict sense of the term.

I must now take leave of my honoured wards, of whom I confess that my commendations are sincerer than my censures, which last were made the rather to forestall the nibblings of others, than to enforce objections of my own.-I would fain intreat still once again for a sober and candid examination of my favourites, and I cannot do this better than by calling to the " gentle reader's" memory the valuable sentiment of Horace, as expanded by the vigorous Dryden"True judgment in poetry, like that in painting, takes a view of the whole together, whether it be good or not; and when the beauties are more than the faults, concludes for the poet against the little judge."

Nov. 8. 1820.

***** ***

This Preface has waited above a month, in expectation that the real Editor of the "Select Poets" would have made some apology to his accustomed readers for appointing a journeyman to that work, which would have been most becomingly performed by himself. But the same