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XC. Parallel Passages in Authors of Note.

MR. URBAN,

THE following miscellaneous observations are much at your

service.

C. T. O.

MALLET, who is by no means despicable as a minor poet, deserves more credit for his Edwin and Emma than for any other of his works. He seems to have had Shakespeare in his eye in the following stanza:

Nor let the pride of great ones scorn
This charmer of the plains;

That sun which bids their diamond blaze
To deck our lily deigns.

See Shakespeare's Winter's Tale, scene 7.

Ed. and Em.

"The self-same sun that shines upon his court
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but

Looks on alike

The following passage from Daniel, which forms a part of a very beautiful and pathetic speech of Richard, during his confinement at Pomfret, is not unlike a passage in Shakes speare.

Thou sitt'st at home, safe by thy quiet fire,
And hear'st of others harms, but feelest none;
And there thou tell'st of kings, and who aspire,
Who fall, who rise, who triumph, who do moan-
Perhaps thou talk'st of me.

See Shakespeare,

LXVI. Book iii. Civil Wars.

-let's away to prison:

We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage;
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues

Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses, and who wins; who's in, who's out; &c. &c."
Lear, Act 5. sc. 2.

M. Drayton, in the following passage, reminds us of a most spirited description in Shakespeare's Henry IV.

Prince Edward all in gold, as he great Jove had been, The Mountfords all in plumes, like ostriches were seen. Page 342. fol. edit.

all furnish'd, all in arms,

All plum'd like estridges, and with the wind
Baiting like eagles having lately bath'd :
Glittering in golden coates like images;
As full of spirit as the month of May,
And gorgeous as the sun at Midsummer;
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
I saw young Harry, with his beaver up,
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm'd,
Rise from the ground like feather'd Mercury.

Shakespeare..

Drayton, in a passage where he personifies the Peak of Derbyshire, has the following idea, which reminds us of a very sublime passage in Shakespeare that becomes ridiculous. from a single vulgar expression, as has been before remarked by Dr. Johnson, in his Rambler:

O ye, my lovely joys, my darlings, in whose eyes
Horror assumes her seat, from whose abiding flies
Thick vapours, that like rugs still hang the troubled air.
Polyolb. song 26.

See Macbeth-where he talks of the blanket of the night. Spenser seems to have suggested the leading idea in that well-known song in Cymbeline, beginning

Hark! the lark at hven's gate sings;
My lady sweet arise-

without the hyperbole of heaven's gate

Wake now my love, awake; for it is time;
The rosy morn long since left Tithon's bed,
All ready to her silver coach to clime,
And Phoebus 'gins to shew his glorious head.
Hark, how the chearful birds do chaunt their layes,
And carol of love's praise.

The merry lark her mattins sings aloft,

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Ah! my dear love, why do ye sleep thus long,
When meeter were that ye should now awake?
Hughes's Spen. V. p. 95.

It is singular that this passage should not be quoted in
Johnson's and Steevens's Shakespeare.

There is a similarity in the following expressions of Shakespeare and Cowley.

that but this blow

Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, on this bank and shoal of time-

Cowley, speaking of this world

Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 7.

Vain weak-built isthmus, which does proudly rise
Up betwixt two eternities.

Cowley's Life and Fame. What Dr. Johnson has said of Akenside, Life, p. 442, reminds us of the following passages:

The words are multiplied till the sense is hardly perceived; attention deserts the mind, and settles in the ear. Johnson.

And call the listning soul into the ear.

Oldham's Ode on St. Cecilia.

None was so marble; but, whilst him he hears,

His soul so long dwelt only in his ears.

Elegie on Dr. Donne, by Sir L. Cary.

And here a female atheist talks you dead.

Johnson's London.

Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead.

Pope's Essay on Crit.

Celestial themes confess'd his tuneful aid;
And heaven that lent him genius was repaid.

Goldsm. Epit. on Dr. Parnell.

This last line contains the same thought with a stanza in Dr. Johnson's Elegy on Levett:

His virtues walk'd their narrow round,

Nor made a pause, nor left a void;

And sure th' Eternal Master found

The single talent well employ'd.

Dr. Johnson has said, that gloriosus is never used in a good sense: we find it, however, used in a good sense by a very

old poet, if that is sufficient authority to justify such a usage. See Nævius, quoted by Aulus Gellius:

Etiam qui res magnas manu sæpe gessit gloriose,
Cujus facta viva nunc vigent

There is probably no imitation in the following passages→→ they express, however, somewhat the same sentiment:

Nor are our powers to perish immature,
But, after feeble effort here, beneath
A brighter sun, and in a nobler soil,
Transplanted from this sublunary bed,
Shall flourish fair, and put forth all their bloom.

Young's Complaint.

Believe the Muse: the wintry blast of death
Kills not the buds of virtue; no, they spread
Beneath the heavenly beams of brighter suns,
Through endless ages into higher powers.

Thomson's Summer, l. 580.

Discord in parts makes harmony in the whole.

Daniel's Queen's Arcadia, sc. 3.

All discord, harmony not understood.

Pope's Essay on Man.

This is the Ta Aos agrar of Eschylus. See Prometh. Vinct.

553.

1786, Sept.

XCI. On Pope's Imitations of our early Poets.

MR. URBAN,

IF the following remarks on Pope are worth insertion in your Magazine, they are much at your service.

O si sic omnia!

From the great merit of the Eloisa to Abelard, the Temple of Fame, part of the Windsor Forest, and the Elegy upon an Unfortunate Lady, it is much to be regretted that Pope's mind was so little accustomed to the simpler beauties and distinct imagery of our earlier models; they would have taught him a more frequent use of compound epithets, and, instead of that general cast which is too much the

characteristic of many of his lines, we should have had juster personification, and imagery more appropriate, of course more poetry and less versification-that fastidious eye of correct judgment, with which he surveyed both men and manners, seduced him from the fablings of fancy, the picturesque scenes of animated nature, and the latent beauties of antiquity;--perhaps his bodily infirmities, added to a considerable share of constitutional bile, might have had great influence in directing the pursuits of his mind; at least by embittering it, they led him to carping, satire, and dry morals-absit verbo invidia!-I would not be understood to detract from his great and almost superior merits as a moralist; but, I mean, dry as opposed to poetry addressed to the imagination-it must give concern to every feeling reader to find, so large a portion of a valuable life given to translations and imitations, to the lavish abuse of his Dunciad, and the insipid innocence of his pastorals. In adopting occasional phrases from our older poets, it is curious to observe what art Pope has shewn in the selection; and in his imitations of passages, what improvement he has made on his originals. The ingenious Mr. T. Warton has before noticed his obligations, in this way, to Milton.-It appears from his letters that he was a reader of Crashaw; with what attention he read him, the following instances are sufficient to discover. It is to be lamented, that Mr. Phillips, in his late edition of Crashaw, has omitted the Poems upon Theological subjects; many of his beauties, by this means, are lost; and, unluckily, those passages which seem more immediately to have dwelt upon the mind of Pope: surely the whole volume might have been republished with great safety. Readers, who concern themselves with Crashaw, concern themselves with him not as a Divine, but as a Poet.

See Crashaw, Edit. 1570, p. 204. Description of a religious house, and condition of life (from Barclay). Pope's mind seems to have caught many hints from this when he wrote his Eloisa to Abelard.

A hasty portion of prescribed sleep,
Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep.

Labour and rest that equal periods keep,
Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep.

CRASHAW.

POPE.

No roofs of gold o'er riotous tables shining,
Whole days and suns devoured with endless dining;

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