the best, on the characters of women, in the year 1727; that is, eight years before this epistle of POPE. Dr. Young was one of the most amiable and benevolent of men; most exemplary in his life, and sincere in his religion.* Nobody ever said more brilliant things in conversation. The late Lord MELCOMBE informed me, that when he and Voltaire were on a visit to his Lordship at Eastbury, the English poet was far supe rior Atheist, and of the female Gamester, are all of them drawn with truth and spirit. And the introductions to these two satires, particularly the address to the incomparable Lady Betty Germain, are perhaps as elegant as any thing in our language. After reading these pieces, so full of a knowledge of the world, one is at a loss to know what Mr. POPE could mean by saying, that though Young was a man of genius, yet that he wanted common sense. * Mr. Walter Harte assured me, he had seen the pressing letter that Dr. Young wrote to Mr. POPE, urging him to write something on the side of Revelation, in order to take off the impressions of those doctrines which the Essay on Man were supposed to convey. He alluded to this in the conclusion of his first Night-Thought. O had he press'd his theme, pursu’d the track O had he mounted on his wing of fire, Soar'd where I sink, and sung immortal man ! rior to the French, in the variety and the novelty of his bon mots and repartees; and Lord Melcombe was himself a good judge of wit and humour, of which he himself had a great portion. If the friendship with which Dr. Young honoured me, does not mislead me, I think I may venture to affirm, that many high strokes of character in his Zanga, many sentiments and images in his Night-Thoughts, and many strong and forcible descriptions in his Paraphrase on Job, mark him for a sublime and original genius. Though at the same time I am ready to confess, that he is not a correct and equal writer,* and was too often turgid and hyperbolical. 15. See how the world its veterans rewards, A youth of frolics, an old age of cards; Fair * So little sensible are we of our own imperfections, that the very last time I saw Dr. Young, he was severely censuring and ridiculing the false pomp of fustian writers, and the nauseousness of bombast. I remember he said, that such torrents of eloquence were muddy as well as noisy; and that these violent and tumultuous authors put him in mind of a passage in Milton, B. ii. v. 539. Others, with vast Typhæan rage more fell, Fair to no purpose, artful to no end, Young without lovers, old without a friend; The antithesis, so remarkably strong in these lines, was a very favourite figure with our poet: he has, indeed, used it but in too many parts of his works; nay, even in his translation of the Iliad, † where it ought not to have been admitted, VOL. II. L aud * Ver. 243. + Voltaire speaks thus of La Motte: so popular and acute a critic may, perhaps, be attended to.-Au-lieu d'échauffer son génie en tâchant de copier les sublimes peintures d'Homére, il voulut lui donner de l'esprit ; c'est la Manie de la plupart des François ; une espéce de pointe qu'ils appellent un trait, une petite antithése, un lèger contraste de mots leur suffit. The following lines are instances: On offense les dieux, mais par des sacrifices And again, Tout le camp s'écria dans une joie extrême, Que ne vaincra-t-il point, il s'est vaincu lui meme. I must only just add, that La Motte, in all the famous dispute about the ancients, never said a thing so ill-founded, and so void of taste, as the following words of the same Voltaire : "Homére and which Dryden has but rarely used in his Virgil. Our author seldom writes many lines together without an antithesis. It must be allowed sometimes to add strength to a sentiment, by an opposition of images; but too frequently repeated, it becomes tiresome and disgusting. Rhyme has almost a natural tendency to betray a writer into it. But the purest authors have despised it, as an ornament pert, and puerile, and epigrammatic. Seneca, Pliny, Tacitus, and later authors, abound in it. Quintilian has sometimes used it with much success; as when he speaks of style; Magna, non nimia; sublimis, non abrupta; severa, non tristis; læta, non luxuriosa; plena, non tumida. And sometimes Tully; as, Vicit pudorem libido, timorem audacia, rationem amentia. But these writers fall into this mode of speaking but seldom, and do not make it their constant "Homere n'a jamais fait répandre de pleurs." Affectus quidem vel illos mites vel hos concitatos, nemo erit tam indoctus qui non in suà potestate hunc auctorem habuisse fateatur. Quintilian, lib. 10. cap. 1. Had Voltaire ever read Quintilian? or rather, had he ever read Homer-in the original? "If Boileau (said the Prince of Conti) does not write against Perrault, I will go myself to the Academy, and I will write upon his seat, Brutus, you are asleep." constant and general manner. Those moderns who have not acquired a true taste for the simplicity of the best ancients, have generally run into a frequent use of point, opposition, and contrast. They who begin to study painting, are struck at first with the pieces of the most vivid colouring; they are almost ashamed to own, that they do not relish and feel the modest and reserved beauties of Raphael. The exact proportion of St. Peter's at Rome, occasions it not to appear so great as it really is. 'Tis the same in writing; but, by degrees, we find that Lucan, Martial, -Juvenal, Q. Curtius, and Florus, and others of that stamp, who abound in figures that contribute to the false florid, in luxuriant metaphors, in pointed conceits, in lively antitheses, unexpectedly darted forth, are contemptible for the very causes which once excited our admiration. 'Tis then we relish Terence, Cæsar, and Xenophon. 16. Kept dross for Duchesses, the world shall know it, To you gave sense, good-humour, and a poet.† * See what Dionysius says of Isocrates, p. 99, v. 2, Edit. Sylb. There are no antitheses in Demosthenes. + Ver. 291. |