-"of the thing which it defcribes, which

"I would have obferved in divers other

places of this poem, that else will pafs *for very careless verfes: as before, And over-runs the neighb'ring fields with violent courfe.

"In the fecond book;

Down a precipice deep, down he cafts them

Brass was his helmet, his boots brass, and

o'er

His breaft a thick plate of brass he wore.

"In the fourth,

Like fome fair pine d'er-looking all th’ignobler wood.

« And,

Some from the rocks caft themselves down beadlong.

"And many more: but it is enough to "inftance in a few. The thing is, that "the difpofition of words and numbers "fhould be fuch, as that, out of the or"der and found of them, the things "themselves may be reprefented. This "the Greeks were not fo accurate as to " bind themselves to; neither have our English poets obferved it, for aught I "can find. The Latins (qui mufas volunt feveriores) fometimes did it, and their "prince, Virgil, always: in whom the

"examples are innumerable, and taken "notice of by all judicious men, fo that "it is fuperfluous to collect them."

I know not whether he has, in many of these instances, attained the reprefentation or resemblance that he purposes. Verfe can imitate only found and motion. A boundless verse, a headlong verse, and a verfe of brass or of ftrong brass, feem to comprise very incongruous and unfociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the found of the line expreffing loofe care, I cannot discover; nor why the pine is taller in an Alexandrine than in ten fyllables.

But, not to defraud him of his due praife, he has given one example of re

pre

presentative verfification, which perhaps no other English line can equal :

Begin, be bold, and venture to be wifc. He who defers this work from day to

day,

Does on a river's bank expecting ftay Till the whole stream that ftopp'd him

fhall be gone,

Which runs, and as it runs, for ever shall

run on.

Cowley was, I believe, the firft poet that mingled Alexandrines at pleafure with the common heroick of ten fyllables, and from him Dryden borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He confidered the verfe of twelve fyllables as elevated and majeftick, and has therefore deviated into that

M

measure when he fuppofes the voice heard of the Supreme Being.

The Author of the Davideis is commended by Dryden for having written it in couplets, because he discovered that any staff was too lyrical for an heroick poem; but this feems to have been known before by May and Sandys, the tranflators of the Pharfalia and the Metamorphofes.

In the Davideis are fome hemiftichs, or verfes left imperfect by the author, in imitation of Virgil, whom he fuppofes not to have intended to complete them: that this opinion is erroneous may be probably concluded, because this truncation. is imitated by no fubfequent Roman poet; because Virgil himself filled up

one