XL.

LECT. Poets, it must be confeffed, 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 fo unmeaning and redundant; expletive words only, which, in place of adding any thing to the defcription, clog and enervate it. Virgil's "Liquidi fontes," and Horace's "Prata canis "albicant pruinis," muft, I am afraid, be affigned to this clafs; for, to denote by an epithet that water is liquid, or that fnow is white, is no better than mere tautology. Every epithet fhould either add a new idea to the word which it qualifies, or at least serve to raise and heighten its known fignification. So in Milton,

-Who shall attempt with wandering feet

The dark, unbottom'd, infinite abyss,

And through the palpable obscure, find out
His uncouth way? or fpread his airy flight,
Upborn with indefatigable wings,
Over the vaft abrupt?

B. II.

The epithets employed here plainly add strength to the description, and affift the fancy in conceiving it; the wandering feet-the unbottomed abyfs-the palpable obfcure-the uncouth way the indefatigable wing-ferve to render the images more complete and diftinct. But there are many general epithets, which, though they appear to raise the fignification of the word to which they are joined, yet leave it fo undetermined, and are now become fo trite

and

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and beaten in poetical language, as to be per- LE CT. fectly infipid. Of this kind are " barbarous dif "cord-hateful envy-mighty chiefs-bloody "war-gloomy fhades-direful scenes," and a thousand more of the fame kind which we meet with occafionally in good Poets; but with which Poets of inferior genius abound every where, as the great props of their affected fublimity. They give a fort of fwell to the language, and raise it above the tone of profe; but they ferve not in the least to illuftrate the object defcribed; on the contrary, they load the Style with a languid verbofity.

SOMETIMES it is in the power of a Poet of genius, by one well-chofen epithet, to accomplish a description, and by means of a fingle 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 fhaggy top of Mona high,

Nor yet where Deva fpreads her wizard stream.

AMONG thefe wild fcenes, "Deva's wizard "ftream" is admirably imaged; by this one word, prefenting to the fancy all the romantic ideas, of a river floating through a defolate country, with banks haunted by wizards and enchanters. Akin to this is an epithet which

Horace

LE CT. Horace gives to the river Hydafpes. A good man, fays he, ftands in need of no arms:

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Sive per Syrtes iter æftuofas,
Sive facturus per inhofpitalem
Caucafum; vel quæ loca fabulofus
Lambit Hydafpes*.

This epithet

fabulofus" one of the commentators on Horace has changed into "fabulofus" or fandy; fubftituting, by a ftrange want of taste, the common and trivial epithet of the fandy river, in place of that beautiful picture which the Poet gives us, by calling Hydafpes the Romantic River, or the fcene of Adventures and Poetic Tales.

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

Bis conatus erat cafus effingere in auro,
Bis patriæ cecidêre manus f.

* Whether through Lybia's burning fands
Our journey leads, or Scythia's lands,
Amidft th' inhospitable waste of snows,
Or where the fabulous Hydafpes flows.

+ Here hapless Icarus had found his part,
Had not the father's grief restrain'd his art;
He twice effay'd to caft his fon in gold,

EN. VI.

FRANCIS.

Twice from his hand he drop'd the forming mould.

DRYDEN.

In this tranflation the thought is justly given; but the beauty of the expreffion "patriæ manus," which in the original conveys the thought with fo much tenderness, is loft.

THESE

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THESE inftances, and obfervations, may give LECT. fome juft idea of true poetical description. We have reafon always to diftruft an Author's defcriptive talents, when we find him laborious and turgid, amaffing common-place epithets and general expreffions, to work up a high concep tion of fome object, of which, after all, we can form but an indiftin&t idea. The beft defcribers are fimple and concife. They fet before us fuch features of an object, as, on the first view, ftrike 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 moft decifive trials of the real merit of Description.

LECTURE XLI.

XLI.

THE POETRY OF THE HEBREWS.

LECT. AMONG the various kinds of Poetry, which we are, at prefent, employed in examining, the Antient Hebrew Poetry, or that of the Scriptures, juftly deferves a place. Viewing these facred books in no higher light, than as they present to us the most antient monuments of Poetry extant at this day in the world, they afford a curious object of Criticism. They dif play the taste of a remote age and country. They exhibit a species of Compofition, very different from any other with which we are acquainted, and, at the fame time, beautiful. Confidered as Infpired Writings, they give rife to difcuffions of another kind. But it is our bufinefs, at prefent, to confider 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 Compofition adequate to the weight and importance of the matter. Dr.

Lowth's