in their descriptions of pictures, images, dreams, apparitions, metamorphofes, and the like; where they bring together two fuch thwarting ideas, by making one part of their defcriptions relate to the representation, and the other to the thing that is reprefented. Of this nature is that verfe, which, perhaps, is the wittiest in Virgil; "Attollens hu"meris famamque et fata nepotum," En. viii. where he describes Æneas carrying on his shoulders the reputation and fortunes of his posterity; which, though very odd and furprizing, is plainly made out, when we confider how these difagreeing ideas are reconciled, and his pofterity's fame and fate made portable by being engraven on the fhield. Thus, when Ovid tells us that Pallas tore in pieces Arachne's work, where fhe had embroidered all the rapes that the gods had committed, he faysWRupit cœleftia crimina." I fhall conclude this tedious reflexion with an excellent ftroke of this nature out of Mr. Montague's * Poem to the King; where he tells us, how the King of France would have been celebrated by his fubjects, if he had ever gained fuch an honourable wound as King William's at the fight of the Boyne : " "His bleeding arm had furnish'd all their rooms, * Afterwards Earl of Halifax. FA B. II. P. 153. 1. 5. Here Cadmus reign'd.] This is a pretty solemn transition to the story of Acteon, which is all naturally told. The goddess and her maids undreffing her, are described with diverting circumstances. Acteon's flight, confufion, and griefs, are paffionately represented; but it is pity the whole narration fhould be fo carelefly clofed up. -Ut abeffe queruntur, "Nec capere oblatæ fegnem fpectacula prædæ. "Vellet abeffe quidem, fed adeft, velletque videre, "Non etiam fentire, canum fera facta fuorum.” P. 156. 1. 12. A generous pack, &c.] I have not here troubled myself to call over Actæon's pack of dogs in rhyme: Spot and Whitefoot make but a mean figure in heroic verse; and the Greek names Ovid uses would found a great deal worse. He closes up his own catalogue with a kind of a jeft on it: " Quofque referre mora eft”—which, way, is too light and full of humour for the other serious parts of this ftory. by the This way of inferting catalogues of proper names in their Poems, the Latins took from the Greeks; but have made them more pleasing than those they imitate, by adapting fo many delightful characters to their persons names; in which part Ovid's copiousness of invention, and great infight into nature, has given him the precedence to all the Poets that ever came before or after him. The smoothness of our English verse is too much loft by the repetition of proper names, which is otherwise very natural, and abfolutely neceffary in fome cafes; as before a battle to raise in our minds an anfwerable expectation of the events, and a lively idea of the numbers that are engaged. For, had Homer or Virgil only told us in two or three lines before their fights, that there were forty thousand of each fide, our imagination could not poffibly have been so affected, as when we see every leader fingled out, and every regiment in a manner drawn up before our eyes. FAB. III. P. 157. 1. 28. How Semele, &c.] This is one of Ovid's finished stories. The tranfition to it is proper and unforced: Juno, in her two fpeeches, acts incomparably well the parts of a refenting goddess and a tattling nurse: Jupiter makes a very majestic figure with his thunder and lightning, but it is ftill fuch a one as fhews who drew it; for who does not plainly discover Ovid's hand in the "Quà tamen ufque poteft, vires fibi demere tentat. P. 158. 1. 28. 'Tis well, fays fhe, &c.] Virgil has made a Beroë of one of his goddeffes in the Fifth Æneid; but if we compare the fpeech fhe there makes with that of her name-fake in this story, we may find the genius of each Poet difcovering itself in the language of the nurse: Virgil's Iris could not have spoken more majestically in her own fhape; but Juno is fo much altered from herfelf in Ovid, that the goddess is quite loft in the old woman. FA B. V. P. 163. 1. 13. She can't begin, &c.] If playing on words be excufable in any Poem, it is in this, where Echo is a speaker; but it is so mean a kind of wit, that, if it deferves excufe, it can claim no more. Mr. Locke, in his Effay of Human Understanding, has given us the best account of wit in short that can any where be met with. "Wit," fays he, lies in the affemblage of ideas, and putting "thofe together with quickness and variety, where"in can be found any resemblance or congruity, "thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agree"able visions in the fancy." Thus does true wit, as this incomparable author observes, generally confift in the likeness of ideas, and is more or lefs wit, as this likeness in ideas is more furprizing and unexpected. But as true wit is nothing else but a fimilitude in ideas, fo is falfe wit the fimilitude in words, whether it lies in the likeness of letters only, as in Anagram and Acroftic; or of Syllables, as in doggrel rhymes; or whole words, as Puns, Echoes, and the like. Befide these two kinds of false and true wit, there is another of a middle nature, that has fomething of both in it-when in two ideas that have fome refemblance with each other, and are both expreffed by the fame word, we make ufe of the ambiguity of the word to speak that of one idea included under it, which is proper to the other. Thus, for example, moft languages have hit on the word, which properly fignifies fire, to express love by (and therefore we may be fure there is fome refemblance in the ideas mankind have of them); from hence the witty Poets of all languages, when they once have called Love a fire, confider it no longer as the paffion, but speak of it under the notion of a real fire; and, as the turn of wit requires, make the fame word in the fame fentence ftand for either of the ideas that is annexed to it. When Ovid's Apollo falls in love, he burns with a new flame; when the Sea-nymphs languish with this paffion, they kindle in the water; the Greek Epigrammatift fell in love with one that flung a fnow-ball at him, and therefore takes occafion to admire how fire could be thus concealed in fnow. In fhort, whenever the Poet feels any thing in this love that resembles fomething in fire, he carries on this agreement into a kind of allegory; but if, as in the preceding inftances, he finds any circumstance in his love contrary to the nature of fire, he calls his love a fire, and by joining this circum |