tertio," to use an expreffion of Quintilian. The first stanza is almost a perfect concert of itself; every different inftrument is described

There follows in this stanza, which is the third, a description of a subject very trite, Orpheus drawing the beasts about him. POPE fhewed his fuperior judgment in taking no notice of this old story, and selecting a more new, as well as more striking incident, in the life of Orpheus. It was the custom of this time, for almost every rhymer to try his hand in an ode on St. Cecilia; we find many despicable rapfodies, fo called, in Tonfen's Mifcellanies. We have therefore also preserved another, and an earlier ode, of Dryden on this fubject. One stanza of which I cannot forbear inserting in this note. It was fet to mufic 1687. by I. Baptista Dragh.

What paffion cannot mufic raife and quell!

When Jubal struck the chorded fhell,

His lift'ning brethren stood around,

And wond'ring on their faces fell,
To worship that celestial found:

Less than a god they thought there could not dwell,

Within the hollow of that shell,

That spoke so sweetly and fo well.

What paffion cannot mufic raise and quell!

This is fo complete and engaging a hiftory-piece, that I knew a person of taste who was refolved to have it executed, if an artist could have been found, on one fide of his falloon. In which cafe, faid he, the painter has nothing to do, but to substitute colours for words, the defign being finished to his hands. The reader doubtless observes the fine effect of the repetition of the laft line; as well as the stroke of nature, in making these rude hearers imagine fome god lay concealed in this firft mufician's inftrument.

and

and illustrated, in numbers, that admirably represent, and correspond to its different qualities and genius. The beginning of the second stanza, on the power which mufic exerts over the paffions, is a little flat, and by no means equal to the conclufion of that ftanza. The animating fong that Orpheus fung to the Argonauts, copied from Valerius Flaccus, for that of Apollonius is of a different nature, is the happily chosen subject of the fourth. On hearing which,

Each chief his sevenfold fhield display'd,
And half unfheath'd the shining blade;

Which effects of the fong, however lively, do not equal the force and spirit of what Dryden afcribes to the fong of his Grecian artist; for when Timotheus cries out REVENGE, raises the furies, and calls up to Alexander's view a troop of Grecian ghosts that were flain and left unburied, inglorious and forgotten, each of them waving a torch in his hand, and pointing to the hoftile temples of the Perfians, and demanding vengeance of their prince, he inftantly

inftantly started from his throne,

Seiz'd a flambeau with zeal to destroy,

while Thais and the attendant princes rushed out with him, to set fire to the city. The whole train of imagery in this stanza is alive, sublime, and animated to an unparallelled degree; the poet had fo ftrongly poffeffed himself of the action described, that he places it fully before the eyes of the reader.

THE descent of Orpheus into hell is gracefully introduced in the fourth ftanza, as it naturally flowed from the subject of the preceding one; the description of the infernal regions is well imagined, and the effects of the musician's lyre on the inhabitants of hell, are elegantly tranflated from the fourth Georgic of Virgil,* and happily adapted to the subject in question. The fupplicating song at the beginning of the sixth stanza, is highly pathetic and poetical, especially when he conjures the powers below,

• Ver. 480.

By

By the hero's armed shades

Glittering through the gloomy glades,
By the youths that dy'd for love

Wand'ring in the myrtle grove;

These images are picturesque and appropriated; and these are such notes as might,

Draw iron tears down Pluto's cheek, *

And make hell grant what love did seek.

But the numbers that conclude this stanza are of fo burlesque and ridiculous a kind, and have so much the air of an Hudibrastic song at a county election, that one is amazed and concerned to find them in a ferious ode, and in an ode of a writer eminently skilled, in general, in accommodating his founds to his fentiments.

Thus fong could prevail
O'er death and o'er hell,

A conqueft how hard and how glorious!

Tho' fate had fast bound her

With Styx nine times round her,
Yet mufic and love were victorious.

* Milton's Il Penferofo.

One

One would imagine that John Dennis, or some hero of the Dunciad, had been here attempting to travesty this description of the restoration of Eurydice to life. It is obfervable, that this is the very measure, Addison thought was proper to use in the comic character of Sir Trufty; by the introduction of which he has so strangely debased and degraded his opera of Rofamond.

How unhappy is he

That is ty'd to a she,

And fam'd for his wit and his beauty;

For of us pretty fellows,

Our wives are so jealous,

They ne'er have enough of our duty. *

These numbers therefore, according to Addifon's ear, conveyed a low and ludicrous idea, instead of being expreffive of triumph and exultation, the images here intended to be impreffed by POPE.

VIRGIL is again imitated throughout the

* A&t I. Scene II. See alfo, Scene IV. A& I. A fong of Grideline and Trufty. A&t. III. Scene IV. I

fixth