Queene. He was enabled to do so, by his having written pastorals himself. The stanza is a fine one, though the enthusiasm is subdued. I will delay no farther upon this subject, but finish with quoting it:

Lo! I, the man, whose Muse whylome did maske,
As time her taught, in lowly shepheard's weeds,
Am now enforst (a farre unfitter taske)
For trumpets stern to chaunge mine oaten reeds,
And sing of knights, and ladies' gentle deeds;
Whose praises having slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds

To blazon broade amongst her learned throng:

Fierce warres and faithful loves shall moralize my song.

(15) Doats on her face in that devouring way.-Spenser, as well as several other poets, has also given an imitation of this magnificent exordium of Lucretius, one of the finest in the world, and worthy of his Greek inspiration: for Lucretius was evidently conversant with the more poetical part of Greek philosophy as well as Epicurus's, and, like all men of imagination, had a religion in spite of himself. Certainly, Venus would never have asked a nobler or more passionate address from the most orthodox of her worshippers.

"Æneadum genetrix, hominum Divûmque voluptas,
Alma Venus, cœli subter labentia signa

Quæ mare navigerum, quæ terras frugiferentes
Concelebras; per te quoniam genus omne animantum
Concipitur, visitque exortum lumina solis;

Te, Dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila cœli,
Adventumque tuum: tibi suaves dædala tellus
Summittit flores; tibi rident æquora ponti,
Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine cœlum.
Nam simul ac species patefacta est verna diei,
Et reserata viget genitabilis aura Favonî,
Aëriæ primùm volucres te, Diva, tuumque
Significant initum, perculsæ corda tuâ vi.
Inde feræ pecudes persultant pabula læta,
Et rapidos tranant amnes; ita capta lepore,
Ille labrisque tuis, omnis natura animantum
Te sequitur cupidè, quo quamque inducere pergis.

Denique per maria, ac montes, fluviosque rapaces,
Frondiferasque domos avium, camposque virentes,
Omnibus incutiens blandum per pectora amorem,
Efficis, ut cupidè generatim sæcla propagant."

Parent of Rome, delicious Queen of Love,
Thou joy of men below and gods above;
Who in one round of ever-blest increase
Roll'st the green regions and the dancing seas;
From whom all beings catch the race they run,
And leap to life, and visit the dear sun;

Thee, Goddess, thee, the winds, the winters fly,
Thee, and the coming of thy suavity :—

For thee the earth lays forth its flowers: for thee

A lustre laughs along the golden sea,

And lightsome heav'n looks round on all, for thou hast made it free.

For soon as Spring, thrown open, re-appears,

And forth, with kisses, come the genial airs,
The birds, first smitten to their hearts, announce
Thee, Goddess, and thy balmy benisons:
The herds, made wild again, in pastures bound,
And track the rivers till their mates be found;

And every living thing, drawn with delight,
Follows with greedy will the charming of thy might,

Through seas, o'er mountains, through the fields, the floods,

And the green houses of the birds, the woods;

All snatch into their hearts the generous wound,

That still the ages may roll on, and nature's place be found.

I would fain translate further on, to come at the beautiful passage alluded to in the text; but the poet's fit of enthusiasm certainly makes a pause here. The long line, more than an Alexandrine, into which I have run out at the conclusion, is a modulation often practised by Dryden on passionate occasions, and I think amply deserves to be revived. It lets the spirit have its full vent, and carries it off in triumph, like the long blast of a trumpet. For Spenser's imitation or paraphrase, see the Faerie Queene, book 4. canto 10. He lengthens the original into a strain of voluptuous languor, like the incense fuming up from the altars at which it is sung; for the scene is laid in Venus's temple.

(16) Le donne, i cavalier, l'arme, gli amori.-The first stanza of the Orlando Furioso. Ariosto is said to have written the two first verses over and over again, and to have bestowed upon them an "incredible" attention. Thus it is that even the most enjoying spirits work for immortality.

(17) His time in polishing another's treasure.-Berni, who re-modelled the Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo. The stanza that follows is the exordium of his Rifacimento. Though I have been in two eminent cities of Italy, one of them famous for its literature, I have not yet been able to meet with Boiardo's work among the booksellers. I have great faith, however, in these old beginners; and much as I admire Berni, am inclined to suspect that the gallant old Lombard, (who is said to have come gallopping home one day in a fit of enthusiasm, and have set all the bells a-ringing in his jurisdiction, because he had found out a fine name for his hero) must have stuff in him well worthy of being read for its own sake. Nor am I shaken in this opinion by the exordium of the original poem, quoted by Sismondi in his Littérature du Midi de l'Europe, tom. 2, p. 58, though undoubtedly Berni has given it an address and delicacy, which leave him in full possession of the praise in the text.

I will take this opportunity of observing, now that I am upon the Italian poets, that the opening stanza of Tasso's Jerusalem is not what his readers might have expected from that great writer, especially as he had an ear finely tuned for the dignified and imposing. It was Voltaire (confound him!) that made me discover there were too many O's in it,-a fault, seemingly, frivolous enough to notice, but still less worthy of being committed. The charge is undoubtedly

true.

Canto l'armi pietosa, e 'l capitano,
Che 'l gran sepolcro liberò di Cristo.
Molto egli oprò col senno e con la mano;
Molto soffrì nel glorioso acquisto.

E invan l'inferno a lui s'oppose; e in vano
S'armò d'Asia e di Libia il popol misto;
Che il ciel gli diè favore, e sotto ai santi
Segni ridusse i suoi compagni erranti.

In revenge, I have the pleasure of knowing that Voltaire began his "epic" with a " vile antithesis," about the "right of victory and the right of birth:"

Je chante le heros, qui regna sur la France,

Et par droit de conquête, et par droit de naissance.

A poem on the Droits of Admiralty might open as well. Voltaire was a wag of wags, a writer of wonderful variety, a great puller down of abuses, though he did not always know what to spare by the way,―in short, a great man, whom little ones would in vain undervalue, by detecting some failures in the universality of his information, which would be passed over in his inferiors: but for epics,

Look at his face, and you'll forget them all.

(18) But his own airs were sung in every bower.-I learn this from an interesting article in the Quarterly Review upon Madame de Genlis' Petrarque et Laure. There is another, still more so, in the same publication, No. 42, entitled Narrative and Romantic Poems of the Italians; and these two, together with one upon Dante in the Edinburgh Review, contain the best and most comprehensive criticism on Italian Poetry, that we have in our language. The second article includes a notice of Mr. Stewart Rose's happy abridgment of the Animali Parlanti, and also of that other piece of wit inspired by Italian romance, entitled a Prospectus of an intended National Poem, which only failed of popularity (if indeed it has failed) because it took up a remote subject, instead of one connected with existing manners. It is full of a manly and urbane pleasantry: and here indeed it committed another mistake; for it is in vain put into the mouths of those fraternal handicraft's-men who are supposed to write it. The two saddlers have been used to better society than that of the village-squire, and are as gentlemanly as Archbishop Turpin or the Cid Hamet Benengeli.

I must observe that these articles in the Quarterly Review are in it, not of it. They are even said to be translated from the contributions of a celebrated Italian now resident in England; but be this as

it may, the number above-mentioned contains the usual accompaniment of party paltering and hypocrisy, especially in one of those articles on Mr. Shelley, the disgusting falsehoods and malignity of which I have exposed in another place.

(19) Emmi venuta certa fantasia.-The exordium of Forteguerri's tragi-comic romance, Ricciardetto. He was a dignitary of the church in Rome, full of wit and spirit, who hearing his friends one evening wondering at the toil and trouble which it must have cost Ariosto and others to write such a heap of poetry, undertook to shew them it was no such difficult task, and produced the first canto of his romance by the following evening. It is reported, that he wrote all 'the other cantos with the same expedition. Nor is it incredible, considering the abundance of rhymes in the Italian language, and the natural poetry into which it runs; but with Forteguerri's leave, however delightful he is, and however he may equal Ariosto in parts, he never rises into his glorious beauty;-unless indeed the latter half of his work is different from the first, for I am now but in the middle of it. If so, I must make him the amende honorable.

In the meanwhile, I will make the said amende to a couple of other accomplished writers, of whom I spoke too hastily some years ago in another piece of rhyming criticism. If any body happens to have a little book in his possession containing "The Feast of the Poets" (which certain critics are always alluding to and never mentioning) he will oblige me by altering the two couplets in which toasts are proposed, to the following:

Then, says Bob," I've a toast," and got up like a gander:
Says Phoebus" Don't spoil it with prosing: its Landor."
And Walter look'd up too and begg'd to propose

"I'll drink him with pleasure," said Phœbus,-" it's Rose."

What I said in the Feast of the Poets respecting the talents of the great Scottish Novelist, was before he had exhibited his genius in prose narrative, and I have unsaid it elsewhere. The corrections are very likely of no importance after all; but they are made out of a sense of the duty which I owe to truth.