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of words, and his placing them for the sweetness of the sound. On this last consideration, I have shunned the cæsura as much as possibly I could: for, wherever that is used, it gives a roughness to the verse; of which we can have little need in a language which is overstocked with consonants. * Such is not the Latin, where the vowels and consonants are mixed in proportion to each other: yet Virgil judged the vowels to have somewhat of an over-balance, and therefore tempers their sweetness with casuras. Such difference there is in tongues, that the same figure, which roughens one, gives majesty to another and that was it which Virgil studied in his verses. Ovid uses it but rarely; and hence it is that his versification cannot so properly be called sweet, as luscious. The Italians are forced upon it. once or twice in every line, because they have a redundancy of vowels in their language. Their metal is so soft, that it will not coin without alloy to harden it. On the other side, for the reason already named, it is all we can do to give sufficient 'sweetness to our language: we must not only chuse our words for elegance, but for sound; to perform which, a mastery in the language is required; the poet must have a magazine of words, and have the art to manage his few vowels to the best advantage, that they may go the farther. He must also know the nature of the vowels-which are more sonorous, and which more soft and sweet-and so dispose them as his present occasions require: all which, and a thousand secrets of versification beside, he may learn from Virgil, if he will take him for his guide. If he be above Virgil, and is resolved to

*It is singular, that, under this conviction, Dryden should have complied with the custom of his age, in striking out the vowel before the end of such words as winged.

follow his own berve, (as the French call it,) the proverb will fall heavily upon him:-" Who teaches himself, has a fool for his master."

Virgil employed eleven years upon his Æneïs; yet he left it, as he thought himself, imperfect; which when I seriously consider, I wish, that, instead of three years which I have spent in the translation of his works, I had four years more allowed me to correct my errors, that I might make my version somewhat more tolerable than it is: for a poet cannot have too great a reverence for his readers, if he expects his labours should survive him. Yet I will neither plead my age nor sickness, in excuse of the faults which I have made: that I wanted time, is all that I have to say; for some of my subscribers grew so clamorous, that I could no longer defer the publication. I hope, from the candour of your lordship, and your often experienced goodness to me, that, if the faults are not too many, you will make allowances with Horace:

-si plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis

Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit,

Aut humana parum cavit natura.--

You may please also to observe, that there is not, to the best of my remembrance, one vowel gaping on another for want of a casura, in this whole poem: but, where a vowel ends a word, the next begins either with a consonant, or what is its equivalent; for our W and H aspirate, and our diphthongs, are plainly such. The greatest latitude I take is in the letter Y, when it concludes a word, and the first syllable of the next begins with a vowel. Neither need I have called this a latitude, which is only an explanation of this general rule-that no vowel can be cut off before another, when we cannot sink the pronunciation of it; as he, she, me, I, &c. Virgil

thinks it sometimes a beauty to imitate the licence of the Greeks, and leave two vowels opening on each other, as in that verse of the Third Pastoral,

Et succus pecori, et lac subducitur agnis.

But, nobis non licet esse tam disertis, at least if we study to refine our numbers. I have long had by me the materials of an English Prosodia, containing all the mechanical rules of versification, wherein I have treated, with some exactness, of the feet, the quantities, and the pauses. The French and Italians know nothing of the two first; at least their best poets have not practised them. As for the pauses, Malherbe first brought them into France within this last century; and we see how they adorn their Alexandrines. But, as Virgil propounds a riddle, which he leaves unsolved

Dic, quibus in terris, inscripti nomina regum
Nascantur flores; et Phyllida solus habeto-

so I will give your lordship another, and leave the exposition of it to your acute judgment. I am sure there are few who make verses, have observed the sweetness of these two lines in Cooper's Hill:

Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage; without o'erflowing, full--- *

and there are yet fewer who can find the reason of that sweetness. I have given it to some of my friends in conversation; and they have allowed the

This celebrated couplet occurs in Sir John Denham's "Cooper's Hill," a poem which was praised beyond its merit by the author's contemporaries. After allowing that the lines are smooth ánd sonorous, which indeed were infrequent qualities of the versification of the period, I fear much of their merit lies in the skilful antithesis of the attributes of the river.

criticism to be just. But, since the evil of false quantities is difficult to be cured, in any modern language; since the French and the Italians, as well as we, are yet ignorant what feet are to be used in heroic poetry; since I have not strictly observed those rules myself, which I can teach others; since I pretend to no dictatorship among my fellow-poets; since, if I should instruct some of them to make well-running verses, they want genius to give them strength as well as sweetness; and, above all, since your lordship has advised me not to publish that little which I know, I look on your counsel as your command, which I shall observe inviolably, till you shall please to revoke it, and leave me at liberty to make my thoughts public. In the mean time, that I may arrogate nothing to myself, I must acknowledge that Virgil in Latin, and Spenser in English, have been my masters. Spenser has also given me the boldness to make use sometimes of his Alexandrine line, which we call, though improperly, the Pindaric, because Mr Cowley has often employed it in his Odes. It adds a certain majesty to the verse, when it is used with judgment, and stops the sense from overflowing into another line. Formerly the French, like us, and the Italians, had but five feet, or ten syllables, in their heroic verse; but, since Ronsard's time, as I suppose, they found their tongue too weak to support their epic poetry, without the addition of another foot. That indeed has given it somewhat of the run and measure of a trimeter; but it runs with more activity than strength: their language is not strung with sinews, like our English; it has the nimbleness of a greyhound, but not the bulk and body of a mastiff. Our men and our verses overbear them by their weight; and Pondere, non numero, is the British motto. The French have set up purity for the standard of their

A

language; and a masculine vigour is that of ours. Like their tongue, is the genius of their poets, light and trifling in comparison of the English; more proper for sonnets, madrigals, and elegies, than heroic poetry. The turn on thoughts and words is their chief talent; but the epic poem is too stately to receive those little ornaments. The painters draw their nymphs in thin and airy habits; but the weight of gold and of embroideries is reserved for queens and goddesses. Virgil is never frequent in those turns, like Ovid, but much more sparing of them in his Æneïs, than in his Pastorals and Georgics.

Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere manes.

That turn is beautiful indeed; but he employs it in the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, not in his great poem. I have used that licence in his Æneïs sometimes; but I own it as my fault. It was given to those who understand no better. It is like Ovid's

Semivirumque bovem, semibovemque virum.

The poet found it before his critics, but it was a darling sin, which he would not be persuaded to reform. The want of genius, of which I have accused the French, is laid to their charge by one of their own great authors, though I have forgotten his name, and where I read it. If rewards could make good poets, their great master* has not been wanting on his part in his bountiful encouragements:

* Louis XIV.; whom Dryden probably in his heart compared with disadvantage to the needy Charles, who loved literary merit without rewarding it; the saturnine James, who rewarded without loving it; and the phlegmatic William, who did neither the one nor the other.