Mr. Parnell's Tale of the Hermit is conspicuous throughout the whole of it, for beautiful descriptive narration. The manner of the Hermit's setting forth to visit the world; his meeting with a companion, and the houses in which they are successively entertained, of the vain man, the covetous man, and the good man, are pieces of very fine painting, touched with a light and delicate pencil, overcharged with no superfluous colouring and conveying to us a lively idea of the objects. But, of all the English poems in the descriptive style, the richest and most remarkable are, Milton's Allegro and Penseroso. The collection of gay images on the one hand, and of melancholy ones on the other, exhibited in these two small, but inimitably fine poems, are as exquisite as can be conceived. They are, indeed, the storehouse whence many succeeding poets have enriched their descriptions of similar subjects; and they alone are sufficient for illustrating the observations which I made, concerning the proper selection of circumstances in descriptive writing. Take, for instance, the following passage from the Penseroso :

-I walk unseen

On the dry, smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering moon,
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray,
Through the Heaven's wide pathless way,
And oft as if her head she bow'd,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
Oft, on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfew sound,
Over some wide watered shore,
Swinging slow with solemn roar;
Or, if the air will not permit,
Some still removed place will fit,
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom;
Far from all resort of mirth
Save the cricket on the hearth,
Or the bellman's drowsy charm,

To bless the doors from nightly harm;
Or let my lamp, at midnight hour,
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Where I may outwatch the Bear
With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato to unfold

What worlds or what vast regions hold
Th' immortal mind, that hath forsook

Her mansion in this fleshy nook;

And of those dæmons that are found

In fire, air, flood, or under ground.

Here there are no unmeaning general expressions; all is particular; all is picturesque; nothing forced or exaggerated; but a simple style and a collection of strong expressive images, which are all of one class, and recall a number of similar ideas of the melancholy kind; particularly the walk by moonlight; the sound of the curfew bell heard distant; the dying embers in the chamber; the bellman's call; and the lamp seen at midnight in the high lonely tower. We may observe, too, the conciseness of the poet's manner. He does not rest long on one cir

are successively varied by the vicissitudes of the year, and imparts to us so much of his own enthusiasm that our thoughts expand with his imagery, and kindle with his sentiments." The censure which the same eminent critic passes upon Thomson's diction, is no less just and well founded, that "it is too exuberant, and may sometimes be charged with filling the ear more than the mind.

cumstance, or employ a great many words to describe it; which always makes the impression faint and languid; but placing it in one strong point of view, full and clear before the reader, he there leaves it.

"From his shield and his helmet," says Homer, describing one of his heroes in battle, "From his shield and his helmet, there sparkled an incessant blaze; like the autumnal star, when it appears in its brightness from the waters of the ocean." This is short and lively; but when it comes into Mr. Pope's hand, it evaporates in three pompous lines, each of which repeats the same image in different words:

High on his helm celestial lightnings play,

His beamy shield emits a living ray;

Th' unwearied blaze incessant streams supplies,
Like the red star that fires th' autumnal skies.

It is to be observed, in general, that, in describing solemn or great objects, the concise manner is, almost always, proper. Descriptions of gay and smiling scenes can bear to be more amplified and prolonged; as strength is not the predominant quality expected in these. But where a sublime, or a pathetic impression is intended to be made, energy is above all things required. The imagination ought then to be seized at once; and it is far more deeply impressed by one strong and ardent image, than by the anxious minuteness of laboured illustration. "His face was without form, and dark," says Ossian, describing a ghost," the stars dim twinkling through his form; thrice he sighed over the hero; and thrice the winds of the night roared around."

It deserves attention too, that in describing inanimate natural objects, the poet, in order to enliven his description, ought always to mix living beings with them. The scenes of dead and still life are apt to pall upon us, if the poet do not suggest sentiments and introduce life and action into his description. This is well known to every painter who is a master of his art. Seldom has any beautiful landscape been drawn, without some human being represented on the canvass, as beholding it, or on some account concerned in it:

Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata Lycori,

Hic nemus; hic ipso tecum consumerer ævo.*

The touching part of these tine lines of Virgil's is the last, which sets before us the interest of two lovers in this rural scene. A long description of the "fontes," the "nemus," and the "prata," in the most poetical modern manner, would have been insipid without this stroke, which, in a few words, brings home to the heart all the beauties of the place; "hic ipso tecum consumerer ævo." It is a great beauty in Milton's Allegro, that it is all alive, and full of persons.

Every thing, as I before said, in description, should be as marked and particular as possible, in order to imprint on the mind a distinct and complete image. A hill, a river, or a lake, rises up more conspicuous to the fancy, when some particular lake, or river, or hill, is specified, than when the terms are left general. Most of the ancient writers have been sensible of the advantage which this gives to description. Thus, in that beautiful pastoral composition, the Song of Solomon, the images

Here cooling fountains roll through flow'ry meads,
Here woods, Lycoris, lift their verdant heads,

Here could I wear my careless life away,

And in tby arms insensibly decay. VIRG, ECL. X. WARTON,

"It

are commonly particularized by the objects to which they allude. is the rose of Sharon; the lily of the valleys; the flock which feeds on Mount Gilead; the stream which comes from Mount Lebanon. Come with me, from Lebanon, my spouse; look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards," ch. iv. 8. So Horace :

Quid dedicatum poscit Apollinem
Vates? quid orat de patera novum
Fundens liquorem? non opimas
Sardina segetes feracis;

Non æstuosæ grata Calabriæ

Armenta; non aurum aut ebur Indicum,

Non rura, quæ Liris quietâ

Mordet aquâ, taciturnus amnis.*

Lib. I. Ode 31.

Both Homer and Virgil are remarkable for the talent of poetica description. In Virgil's second Eneid, where he describes the burning and sacking of Troy, the particulars are so well selected and represented, that the reader finds himself in the midst of that scene of horror. The death of Priam, especially, may be singled out as a masterpiece of description. All the circumstances of the aged monarch arraying himself in armour, when he finds the enemy making themselves masters of the city; his meeting with his family, who are taking shelter at an altar in the court of the palace, and their placing him in the midst of them; his indignation when he beholds Pyrrhus slaughtering one of his sons; the feeble dart which he throws; with Pyrrhus's brutal behaviour, and his manner of putting the old man to death, are painted in the most affecting manner, and with a masterly hand. All Homer's battles, and Milton's account, both of paradise and of the infernal regions, furnish many beautiful instances of poetical description. Ossian, too, paints in strong and lively colours, though he employs few circumstances; and his chief excellency lies in painting to the heart. One of his fullest descriptions is the following of the ruins of Balclutha; I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The fire had resounded within the halls; and the voice of the people is now heard no more. The stream of Clutha was removed from its place, by the fall of the walls; the thistle shook there its lonely head; the moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out at the window; the rank grass waved round his head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina. Silence is in the house of her fathers." Shakspeare cannot be omitted on this occasion, as singularly eminent for painting with the pencil of nature. Though it be in manners and characters that his chief excellency lies, yet his scenery also is often exquisite, and happily described by a single stroke; as in that fine line of the "Merchant of Venice," which con

veys to the fancy as natural and beautiful an image as can possibly be exhibited in so few words?

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, &c.

Much of the beauty of descriptive poetry depends upon a right choice of epithets. Many poets, it must be confessed, are too careless in this particular. Epithets are frequently brought in merely to complete the verse, or make the rhyme answer; and hence they are so unmeaning and redundant; expletive words only, which in place of adding any thing to the description, clog and enervate it. Virgil's "Liquidi fontes," and Horace's "Prata canis albicant pruinis," must, I am afraid, be assigned to this class for, to denote by an epithet that water is liquid, or that snow is white, is no better than mere tautology. Every epithet should either add a new idea to the word which it qualifies, or at least serve to raise and heighten its known signification. So in Milton.

-Who shall tempt with wand'ring feet

The dark, unbottom'd, infinite abyss,
And through the palpable obscure, find out
His uncouth way? or spread his airy flight,
Upborn with indefatigable wings,

Over the vast abrupt?

B. II.

The epithets employed here plainly add strength to the description, and assist the fancy in conceiving it ;-the wandering feet-the unbottomed abyss-the palpable obscure-the uncouth way-the indefatigable wing -serve to render the images more complete and distinct. But there are many general epithets, which though they appear to raise the signification of the word to which they are joined, yet leave it so undetermined, and are now become so trite and beaten in poetical language as to be perfectly insipid. Of this kind are "barbarous discord-hateful envymighty chiefs-bloody war-gloomy shades-direful scenes," and a thousand more of the same kind which we meet with occasionally in good poets; but with which poets of inferior genius abound every where, as the great props of their affected sublimity. They give a sort of swell to the language, and raise it above the tone of prose; but they serve not in the least to illustrate the object described; on the contrary, they load the style with a languid verbosity.

Sometimes it is in the power of a poet of genius, by one well-chosen epithet, to accomplish a description, and by means of a single word, to paint a whole scene to the fancy. We may remark this effect of an epithet in the following fine lines of Milton's Lycidas:

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep

Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas?

For neither were ye playing on the steep,
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,

Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.

Among these wild scenes, "Deva's wizard stream" is admirably imaged; by this one word presenting to the fancy all the romantic ideas of a river flowing through a desolate country, with banks haunted by wizards and enchanters. Akin to this is an epithet which Horace gives to the river Hydaspes. A good man, says he, stands in need of no arms: Sive per Syrtes iter æstuosas, Sive facturus per inhospitalcm Fff

Caucasum; vel quæ loca fabulosus
Lambit Hydaspes.*

This epithet "fabulosus," one of the commentators on Horace has changed into "sabulosus," or sandy; substituting, by a strange want of taste, the common and trivial epithet of the sandy river, in place of that beautiful picture which the poet gives us, by calling Hydaspes the romantic river, or the scene of adventurers and poetic tales.

Virgil has employed an epithet with great beauty and propriety, when accounting for Dædalus not having engraved the fortune of his son Icarus:

Bis conatus erat casus effingere in auro,
Bis patriæ cecidere manus.f

Æs. VI.

These instances, and observations, may give some just idea of true poetical description. We have reason always to distrust an author's descriptive talents, when we find him laborious and turgid, amassing commonplace epithets and general expressions, to work up a higher conception of some object, of which, after all, we can form but an indistinct idea. The best describers are simple and concise. They set before us such features of an object, as, on the first view, strike and warm the fancy; they give us ideas which a statuary or a painter could lay hold of, and work after them; which is one of the strongest and most decisive trials of the real merit of description.

LECTURE XLI.

THE POETRY OF THE HEBREWS.

AMONG the various kinds of poetry, which we are, at present, employed in examining, the ancient Hebrew poetry, or that of the Scriptures, justly deserves a place. Viewing these sacred books in no higher light, than as they present to us the most ancient monuments of poetry extant, at this day, in the world, they afford a curious object of criticism. They display the taste of a remote age and country. They exhibit a species of composition, very different from any other with which we are acquainted, and, at the same time, beautiful. Considered as inspired writings, they give rise to discussions of another kind. But it is our business, at present, to consider them not in a theological, but in a critical view: and it must needs give pleasure, if we shall find the beauty and dignity of the composition adequate to the weight and importance of the matter. Dr. Lowth's learned treatise," De Sacra Poesi Hebræorum," ought to

* Whether through Lybia's burning sands
Our journey leads, or Scythia's lands,
Amidst th' unhospitable waste of snows,
Or where the fabulous Hydaspes flows.
Here hapless Icarus had found his part,
Had not the father's grief restrain'd his art,
He twice essayed to cast his son in gold,
Twice from his hand he dropp'd the forming mould.

FRANCIS.

DRYDEN

In this translation the thought is justly given; but the beauty of the expression "patriæ manus," which in the original conveys the thought with so much tenderness, is tost.