during the midnight nuptials of his rival. In that instance we forgive, we even forget, the rhymes, from that sympathetic gloom of spirit which imagery, thus solemn, inspires. I have often thought that English poetry has scarce any thing more impressive, more simply grand, more chillingly awful, than the second couplet of the passage to which I allude-thus:

"Lean wolves forget to howl at night's pale noon,
And yelping curs bark at the silent moon."

The prologue to the Stepmother is extremely well written. It has taken Johnson's counsel, to catch the aura popularis, from whatever point it may blow. Nor less happy is the epilogue, in its censure of that immoral tendency which prevails in the German plays. What idiot mania, to forsake our Shakespeare for them!

I have the honour to remain, with high esteem, my Lord, your Lordship's, &c.

LETTER LVI.

CHARLES SIMPSON, Esq.

Lichfield, Aug. 30, 1800.

I CONGRATULATE you, my long valued friend, on your marriage, and also your amiable bride. There are some things which we receive upon implicit trust, and the merit of her who could be your choice is one of my implicits.

Your little wedding present was very kind, and I thank you for the distinction. May the happiness of this union prove unclouded as was the day on which you plighted your vows, till age and inevitable infirmities must a little dull and deaden its glow.

I have lately read a curious book, recently published, Dunster on the subject of Joshua Sylvester's translation of the French poet, Du Bartas. It recals this translation from the oblivion into which the alternate turgidness, and quaint affectation of its phraseology, and Dryden's contemptuous satire, had combined to place it. Its subject, the creation—the first pair-their temptation and fall, with other of the Scripture traditions. The

translation is avowedly bold and paraphrastic, and first appeared when Milton was only eight years old.

The above mentioned book treats of this work, giving large extracts to support its author's conviction, that Milton made plenteous use of its crude materials, and it sufficiently impresses that conviction upon the mind of all its unprejudiced readers.

Strange and rugged are these materials-careless even of quantity in the measures-with rhymes continually doubled in one line, in this way,"And pleasures in his treasures gaily found,"till the couplets rattle and jingle like untuned bells; metaphors frequently hard and obscure; imagery as frequently distorted and violent-interspersed with allusions absolutely farcical.

Yet is this chaos almost as often illuminated by strong flashes of genius. Impersonization, at times, as grand as it is bold, and now and then an highly musical couplet, as if a throstle were to sing, at intervals of silence from the general chatter of jays, cuckoos, and sparrows. This is one of them, though, quoted from memory, it may not be quite in the first line exact-but of the second line I am certain. Speaking of the spontaneous production of the Edenic Garden:

"And there was given, whate'er boon nature yields,
Seedless and artless over all the fields."

But still this translation might fail to create powerful interest in the readers, did we not indisputably find in it the prima stamina of the Paradise Lost; the manner of treating that Scriptural story; its sentiments sometimes through whole passages; its imagery in several instances; its epithets very often.

Nor only in Paradise Lost, but in Milton's lesser poems, we find thoughts, pictures, and phrases, adopted from Sylvester, since the resemblance sets aside, in its nearness, all possibility of coincidence. Whether they are to be found in Du Bartas, or were the offspring of the translator's paraphrastic licence, it might be curious to inquire. The editor of this comparative volume is silent on that head.

The wonder seems, that this well-head of so many of the streams which constituted our vast and noble poetic river, has only now been discovered; that Dryden, who, to have satirized Sylvester, must have looked into him, and who was known to have felt some jealousy of the fame of Milton, was not aware how greatly he had been indebted, either to Du Bartas, or to his translator.

If he had been aware of it, the lettered world would have loudly heard of the plagiary.

Mr T. Warton could not have read Sylvester's translation, or he would have shewn us in his admirable edition of Milton's lesser poems, which traces their imitations to so many sources, that the grand Cerberian, and midnight-cave scenery, which opens L'Allegro, is entirely from Sylvester's Du Bartas. He does mention, upon the authority of Mr Bowle, that Il Penseroso's first lines are formed from a distich in Sylvester, thus,

"Hence, hence false pleasures, momentary joys,
Mock us no more with your illuding toys;"

but this resemblance is shadowy and immaterial, compared to that in the opening of L'Allegro. Mr T. Warton mentions also, on the same authority, Milton's "Hide me from day's gairish eye," that Sylvester has" From day's glorious eye;" but that might very well be coincidence, or, if a plagiarism, it might be from others as well as from Sylvester, since Shakespeare calls the sun "The beauteous eye of heaven;" and a still older poet, Browne, in his Pastorals, says,

"While that the day's sole eye doth gild the seas.”