les François, qui n'ont guere commence à perfectionner la grande poesie qu'au un Theatre, n'ont pû et n'ont dû exprimer alors que ce qui peut toucher l'ame. Nous nous sommes interdits nous-memes insensiblement presque tous les objects que d'autres nations ont osè prendre. Il n'est rien que le Dante n'exprimât, a l'example des anciens: il accoutuma les Italiens a tout dire. Mais nous, comment pourions-nous adjourdhui imiter l'auteur des Georgiques, qui nomme sans detour tous les instruments de l'agriculture *?יי

After all, may we not ask, Does not the nature of heroic poetry consist in a due selection of objects? Are not importance and dignity its essential properties? Is it not its

*

Disc. de M. Voltaire, a l'academie François. Oeuvres, p. 181. tom. 5. 1756. 8vo. See Boileau's Dissertation sur la Joconde. Oeuvres. Paris, 1747. p. 86. tom. iii. 8vo.

immediate province to separate high from low, fair from deformed; to compound ra ther than to copy nature, and to present those exalted combinations, which never existed together, amid the general and necessary defects of real life?

SECT. VII.

Of Spenser's Inaccuracies.

FEW poets appear to have composed with greater rapidity than Spenser. Hurried away by the impetuosity of imagination, he frequently cannot find time to attend to the niceties of construction; or to stand still and revise what he had before written, in order to prevent contradictions, inconsistencies, and repetitions. Hence it is, that he not only fails in the connexion of single words, but of circumstances: not only violates the rules of grammar, but of probability, truth, and propriety.

A review of these faults, which flow, perhaps, from that cause which produced his greatest beauties, will tend to explain many passages in particular, and to bring us acquainted with his manner in general.

I shall begin with his ellipsts, in which the reader will find his omission of the relative to be frequent.

B. i. c. vi. s. x.

As when a greedy wolf through hunger fell,
A silly lamb far from the flocke doth take,
Of whom he means his bloody feast to make,

A lyon spyes fast running towards him.

He should have said, a greedy wolf who through hunger fell.

B. i. c. vii. s. xxxvii.

A gentle youth, his dearely loved squire,
His speare of heben wood behind him bare,
A goodly person, and could menage faire,
His stubborne steede, &c.

Who is omitted before could menage faire.

2

B. i. c. x. s. xlii.

Whose face he made all beasts to feare, and gave
All in his hand.-

That is, into whose hand he gave all.

B. i. c. xi. s. xxi.

He cryde as raging seas are wont to roare,
When wintry storme his wrathfull wreck doth threat,
The roaring billowes beat the rugged shore,
As they the earth would shoulder from her seat
And greedy gulfe devoure.

Some such word as while is to be under

stood before the roaring billowes.

B. i. c. x. s. li.

Whose staggering steps thy steadie hand doth lead
And shews the way his sinfull soule to save.

He should have said, and to which it shews the way.

B. iii. c. ii. s. xlv.

Which lovst the shadow of a warlike knight,
No shadow, but a body hath in powre.