fault; but he has by no means reprefented the dignity or the fimplicity of Homer. He is fometimes paraphraftic and redundant, but more frequently retrenches or impoverishes what he could not feel and exprefs. In the mean time, he labours with the inconvenience ofan aukward, inharmonious, and unheroic measure, impofed by cuftom, but difguftful to modern ears. Yet he is not always without strength or spirit. He has enriched our language with many compound epithets, fo much in the manner of Homer, fuch as the filver-footed Thetis, the filverthroned Juno, the triple-feathered helme, the bigh-walled Thebes, the faire-haired boy, the filverflowing floods, the hugely peopled towns, the Grecians navy-bound, the ftrong-winged lance, and many more which might be collected. Dryden reports, that Waller never could read Chapman's Homerwithout a degree of transport. Pope is of opinion, that Chapman covers his defects " by a daring "fiery fpirit that animates his "tranflation, which is fomething "like what one might imagine "Homer himself to have writ "before he arrived to years of "difcretion." But his fire is too frequently darkened, by that fort of fuftian which now disfigured the diction of our tragedy." Chapman alfo, in the year 1614,

published the Odyea, which he dedicated to Carr Earl of Somerset.

In addition to the antient authors of Greece and Rome, tranflations of most of the Italian poets into English took place towards the clofe of this century. Ariofto, the tales of Boccafe, Bandello, and of other Italian authors, were tranflated into our language, and became the foundation of many of the works of Shakespear, Dryden and others. Whatever could enrich, or furnifh with matter our future poets, was now fhowered down upon them with uncommon exuberance. Our language was confiderably improved, the beauties of antient literature were ftudied and copied with fuccefs, the works of the modern claffics, if I may fo call them, were laid open to our ancestors et in medium proferuntur, and finally our poetry was arrived at that point, when fhe had neither contracted the feverity of age, nor was fo much a child as to be pleafed most with what was most strange and unnatural.

As a confiderable part of the laft fection of this volume, containing a general view and character of the poetry of Queen Elizabeth's age, is inferted in another part of our Regifter for this year*, we shall not touch upon it here.

THE