網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

rant, in argument loquacious, and in narration tirefome.

His diction is certainly fo far poetical as it is not profaick, and fo far valuable as it is not common. He is to be commended as having fewer artifices of difguft than most of his brethren of the blank fong. He rarely either recalls old phrafes or twists his metre into harth inverfions. The sense

however of his words is ftrained; when he views the Ganges from Alpine heights; that is, from mountains like the Alps. And the pedant furely intrudes, but when was blank verfé without pedantry? when he tells how Planets abfolve the fated round of Time.

It is generally known to the readers of poetry that he intended to revise and augment this work, but died before he had completed his defign. The reformed work as he left it, and the addition which he had made, are very properly retained in this collection. He feems to have fomewhat contracted his diffufion; but I know not whether he has gained in clofeness what he has loft in fplendor. In the additional book, the Tale of Solon is too long.

His other poems are now to be confidered; but a fhort confideration will dispatch them. It is not easy to guess why he addicted himself so diligently to lyrick poetry, having neither the ease and airinefs of the lighter, nor

the vehemence and elevation of the grander ode. When he lays his ill-fated hand upon his harp, his former powers seem to desert him; he has no longer his luxuriance of expreffion, nor variety of images. His thoughts are cold, and his words inelegant. Yet fuch was his love of lyricks, that, having written with great vigour and poignancy his Epistle to Curio, he transformed it afterwards into an ode difgraceful only to its author.

Of his odes nothing favourable can be faid; the fentiments commonly want force, nature, or novelty; the diction is fometimes harsh and uncouth, the stanzas ill-constructed and unpleasant, and the rhymes diffonant, or unfkilfully dif

[blocks in formation]

pofed, too distant from each other, or arranged with too little regard to eftablished use, and therefore perplexing to the ear, which in a fhort compofition. has not time to grow familiar with an innovation.

To examine fuch compofitions fingly, cannot be required; they have doubtlefs brighter and darker parts': but when they are once found to be generally dull, all further labour may be fpared; for to what use can the work be criticised that will not be read?

« 上一頁繼續 »