in the works of that great master, some allusions to the meaner arts, as well as illustrations drawn from them, which, however the antiquary might regard as throwing light on so remote a period, criticism must regret as repugnant to that simplicity and universality which form the essential characteristics of poetry. When Hector tells Paris that he deserved a coat of stone, i. e. to be stoned to death, I cannot help suspecting it to have been a cant word of that time; and am rather disgusted, than satisfied, to find the security which Neptune gives for Mars, was agreeable to the form of procedure in the Athenian courts. Though in this instance a modern, and especially a modern of this country, may be easily prejudiced; the laws here, by the uncouthness of language, and other numberless particularities, wearing an air of ridicule by no means connected with the idea of laws in general. Yet, whatever allowances we admit, in consideration of the distant period which produced this patriarch of poetry and literature, and however we abstract ourselves from the prevailing prejudices of modern manners, we still find ourselves better pleased with those images which, from their simplicity, in so long a period, have un

dergone the smallest variation. The following lines are perhaps the most pleasing to a modern reader of any of the whole Iliad:

What time, in some sequestered vale,

The weary woodman spreads his sparing meal;
When his tir'd arms refuse the axe to rear,
And claim a respite from the sylvan war;
But not till half the prostrate forest lay
Stretch'd in long ruin, and expos'd to day.

POPE.

And it is a curious consideration, that in a -period which has exhausted the variety of wealth and vanity, the simple life of the labourer has not undergone the most trifling alteration. Milton, a strict observer as well as a constant imitator of the ancients, has adopted the same idea in the following lines:

What time the labour'd ox

With loosen'd traces from the furrow came,
And the swink'd hedger at his supper sat.

The father of English poetry, like that of the Grecian, lived in a period little favourable to simplicity in poetry; and several meannesses occur throughout his works, which in an age more refined, or more barbarous, he must have avoided. We see among the worthie acts of Duke Theseus,

How he took the nobil cite after,

And brent the walls, and tore down roof and rafter.

And, among the horrid images which crowd the temple of Mars,

The child stranglid in the cradil,

The coke scaldid for all his long ladil.

The state of equipoise between horror and laughter, which the mind must here experience, may be ranked among its most unpleasing sensations. The period at which the arts attain to their highest degree of perfection, may be esteemed more favourable to the productions of the muses, than either of the foregoing; the mind is indulged in free retrospect of antiquity, and sometimes in conjectural glimpses of futurity; with such a field open before him, the objects which we must suppose should more immediately attract the attention of the poet, would be the failure or success of his predecessors; and the causes to which either was to be attributed. Pope has fully availed himself of the dear-bought experience of all who went before him; there is perhaps no poet more entirely free from this failing. I shall, however, only cite one instance, in which he may seem to have carried his regard for simplicity so far,

as to shew himself guilty of inaccuracy and inattention:

The hungry judges now the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

That judges in England never sign a sentence is well known; and hunger, whatever effect it might have had on the jurymen of ancient days, with those of modern times seems to operate rather as an incitement to mercy. Clifden's proud alcove has not at present, and probably never had, any existence; but the fault, if any there is, seems rather that of the language than the poet: or perhaps, after all, it was mere penury of rhyme, and a distress similar to that which made him in another place hunt his poor dab-chick into a copse where it was never seen but in the Dunciad.

THE MICROCOSм, No. 9, January 29, 1787.

The propriety or impropriety of local allusion, in poetry. depends altogether upon the taste exhibited in the selection of circumstances; when this has been correct and pure, a strength and vivacity, a verisimilitude unattainable by any other mean, will be the result.

No. CVIII.

Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,
Say, here he gives too little, there too much,

POPE,

THE inhabitants of lower Egypt had in vain waited the distention of the all-prolific Nile; the day appointed for festive gratitude was passed in the murmurs of disappointment; and famine, with its terrific train, appeared; when Ali, the son of Hassan, quitted Garam, his native place, in hope of finding at Cairo the means of subsisting life. The intense heat of the sun, which now poured its fervid rays on his defence, less head, at once stimulated and relaxed him but despair animating him, he braved the torrid sand and vertical ray, and bade adieu to thos e fields, which, instead of salubrious nutriment, now produced only blinding dust. His eyes had but once looked in vain for his dwelling, when he fell prostrate on the inhospitable wast e, and became vigourless and despondent.

;

"O how unequally! how partially! how injudiciously! (said Ali) are the goods of fortune distributed. At once she is lavish and penurious; for she abounds where her blessings are not