Thus song could prevail

O'er death and o'er hell,

A conquest how hard and how glorious!
Tho' fate had fast bound her

With Styx nine times round her,
Yet music and love were victorious.

One would imagine that John Dennis, or some hero of the Dunciad, had been here attempting to travesty this description of the restoration of Eurydice to life. It is observable, that this is the very measure Addison thought was proper to use in the comic character of Sir Trusty; by the introduction of which he has so strangely debased and degraded his elegant opera of Rosamond:

How unhappy is he

That is ty'd to a she,

And fam'd for his wit and his beauty;

For of us pretty fellows

Our wives are so jealous,

They ne'er have enough of our duty.*

These numbers, therefore, according to Addison's ear, conveyed a low and ludicrous idea, instead

E 4

* Act I. Scene II. See also, Scene IV. Act I. A song

of Grideline and Trusty. Act III. Scene IV.

of

of being expressive of triumph and exultation, the images here intended to be impressed by POPE.

Virgil is again imitated throughout the sixth stanza, which describes the behaviour of Orpheus on the second loss of Eurydice. I wish POPE had inserted that striking circumstance, so strongly imagined, of a certain melancholy murmur, or rather dismal shriek, that was heard all around the lakes of Avernus, the moment Orpheus looked back on his wife;

-Terque fragor stagnis auditus Avernis.*

And as prosopopeias are a great beauty in lyric poetry, surely he should not have omitted those natural and pathetic exclamations of Eurydice, the moment she was snatched back, and which she uttered as she was gradually sinking to the shades, especially where she movingly takes her last adieu;

Jamque vale!

And

* Georgic. iv. 493.

And adds, that she is now surrounded with a vast darkness, "feror ingenti circumdata nocte;" and in vain stretching out her feeble arms towards him,

Invalidasque tibi tendens, heu! non tua, palmas.*

This lively and pathetic attitude would have made a striking picture under the hands of POPE. The reader, I presume, feels the effect of the judicious placing in the verse, heu! non tua, and of its repetition after tibi. The places in which Orpheus, according to POPE, made his lamentations, are not so wild, so savage, and dismal, as those mentioned by Virgil: to introduce him "beside the falls of fountains," conveys not such an image of desolation and despair, as the caverns on the banks of Strymon and Tanais, the Hyperborean deserts, and the Riphæan solitudes. And to say of Hebrus, only, that it "rolls in meanders," is flat and frigid, and does not heighten the melancholy of the place.

thesis in the succeeding lines,

There is an anti"he glows amid

Rhodope's

* Ver. 498,

Rhodope's snows," which I hope the poet did not intend, as it would be a trivial and puerile conceit. The death of Orpheus is expressed with a beautiful brevity and abruptness, suitable to the nature of the ode:

Hark! Hæmus resounds with the Bacchanals cries,
Ah! see he dies!

Yet even in death Eurydice he sung.

Instead of sung, Virgil says vocabat, which is more natural and tender; and Virgil adds a very moving epithet, that he called miseram Eurydicen. I am sensible POPE never intended an exact translation of the passages of the Georgics here alleged I only hint, that, in my humble judgment, he has omitted some of the most striking incidents in the story. I have lately seen a manuscript ode, entitled, "On the Use and Abuse of Poetry," in which Orpheus is considered in another and a higher light, according to ancient mythology, as the first legislator and civilizer of mankind. I shall here insert a stanza of it, containing part of what relates to this subject.

2

ANTISTROPHE

ANTISTROPHE II.

Such was wise Orpheus' moral song,
The lonely cliffs and caves among:
From hollow oak, or mountain-den,
He drew the naked, gazing men;

Or where in turf-built sheds, or rushy bowers,
They shiver'd in cold wintry showers,

Or sunk in heapy snows;

Then sudden, while his melting music stole
With powerful magic o'er each softening soul,
Society, and law, and sacred order rose.

EPODE II.

Father of peace and arts! he first the city built;
No more the neighbour's blood was by his neighbour spilt
He taught to till, and separate the lands;

He fix'd the roving youths in Hymen's myrtle bands;
Whence dear domestic life began,

And all the charities that soften'd man:

The babes that in their fathers' faces smil'd,
With lisping blandishments their rage beguil'd,
And tender thoughts inspir'd,-&c.

I am not permitted to transcribe any more, and therefore return to POPE again.

The