And scatter'd rays did make a doubtful fight, Like to the first of day, or laft of night. Ovid, Met. IV. 399. Famque dies exactus erat, tempufque fubibat, But the one defcribes break of day, and the other the close of the day. Seneca, Herc. Fur. 671. nočle fic mixta folet Præbere lumen primus aut ferus dies. Ovid, Amor. I. v. 5. Qualia fublucent, fugiente, crepuscula Phabo: CANTO v. I, But kept his love and burning flame within, Which more flam'd out, the more he preft it in. Ovid, Met. IV. 64. Quoque magis tegitur, tectus magis æftuat ignis. STANZ. STAN Z. IV. Nor did she scorn him, though not nobly born: Ovid, Epift. IV. 161. Nobilitas fub amore jacet. But why does he say that Anchises was not nobly born? It is a great mistake. Anchises was the fon of Capys, Capys of Affaracus, Affaracus of Tros, Tros of Erichthonius, Erichthonius of Dardanus; Dardanus of Jupiter, and of Electra, who was the daughter of Atlas. CAN Tо VI. 9. That Jove upon him down his thunder darted, Blafting his fplendent face, and all his beauty fwarted. Virgil, Æn. II. 648. Ex quo me divúm pater atque hominum rex Fulminis adflavit ventis, et contigit igni. THUS much on Spenfer. What I have here offered of a Commentary; deficient, indeed, in many points; may be called an Effay, or rough draught yet yet in fome measure ufeful, and entertaining to a poetical reader of Spenfer. Much more might be done, particularly towards fettling the text, by a careful collation of Editions, and by comparing the Author with himself: But that required more time and application than I was willing to bestow, and more copies than I had by me. I had only two Editions to confult. I fhall fubjoin a remark or two on the Differtation which Mr. Hughes has prefixed to his Edition; intitled AN ESSAY ON ALLEGORICAL POETRY. "Homer's giving fpeech to the river Xanthus in the Iliad, and to the horses of Achilles, fèem to be inventions of the fame kind, and might be defigned to fill the reader with aftonishment and concern." Homer's giving speech to the horse [not borfes] of Achilles, is indeed a bold fiction; but his giving fpeech to the river Xanthus is not fo, nor ought it to be reckoned more marvellous than his making Jupiter and Juno speak for Xanthus was not the water of the river, but the God God of the river, as Neptune is the God of the fea. "We find a large groupe of thefe fhadowy figures placed in the fixth book of the Æneis, at the entrance into the infernal regions; but as they are only fhewn there, and have no fhare in the action of the poem, the description of them is a fine allegory: Luctus et ultrices pofuere cubilia Curæ, Senectus, Metus, - Fames,-Ege- Morbi, ftas, Letum, Difcordia, Somnia. As perfons of this imaginary life are to be excluded from any fhare in Epick Poems, &c." Excluded. Why fo? and by what law? Somnus is introduced as acting in the Ilias more than once, as alfo in other Heroic poems: and "Taval, Sleep and Death, are appointed to carry off the body of Sarpedon, and have a place in Hefiod's Theogonia, v. 759. In a poem which is built upon a Jewish or Christian plan, a mixture of true religion and fable, good and bad Angels in one place, and Jupiter and Juno in another, is perhaps juftly liable to cenfure; though fome great poets have not avoided it. But, But, to allow a poet to introduce Mars and Minerva, and to forbid him to make ufe of Sleep, and Death, and Fear, and Discord, &c. as actors, feems to be injudicious; founded upon a weak prejudice, that the latter have not in our imagination as good a right to be Perfons as the former. The Heathen theology is to be taken from the heathen writers; and whatever is a deity in Homer and Hefiod, has a perpetual and inconteftible right to be a poetical God. THE LIFE OF SPENSER. Hic, prope Chaucerum, fitus eft Spenferius, illi *** ** Hic prope Chaucerum Spensere poeta poetam "In the last couplet, fays Mr. Hughes, it is not improbable the author might have in his eye thofe celebrated lines written by Cardinal Bembo on Raphael d'Urbin. Ille hic eft Raphael, timuit quo fospite vinci The |