Page:The Dunciad - Alexander Pope (1743).djvu/255

224 of the sound, and the easy turn of the words in this dirge (to make use of our author's expression) are extremely elegant.

In another of his Pastorals, a shepherd utters a dirge not much inferior to the former, in the following lines:

 Ah me, the while! ah me! the luckless day! Ah luckless lad! the rather might I say! Ah silly I! more silly than my sheep, Which on the flow'ry plain I once did keep. 

How he still charms the ear with these artful repetitions of the epithets; and how significant is the last verse! I defy the most common reader to repeat them without feeling some motions of compassion.

In the next place I shall rank his Proverbs, in which I formerly observed he excels. For example:

 A rolling stone is ever bare of moss; And, to their cost, green years old proverbs cross.

—He that late lies down, as late will rise, And, sluggard-like, 'till noon-day snoring lies.

—Against ill luck all cunning foresight fails; Whether we sleep or wake, it nought avails.

—Nor fear, from upright sentence, wrong. 

Lastly, his elegant dialect, which alone might prove him the eldest born of Spencer, and our only true Arcadian. I should think it proper for the several writers of Pastoral to confine themselves to their several counties. Spencer seems to have been of this opinion; for he hath laid the scene of one of his Pastorals in Wales; where with all the simplicity natural to that part of our island, one shepherd bids the other good-morrow, in an unusual and elegant manner:

 Diggon Davy, I bid hur God-day; Or Diggon hur is, or I mis-say. 

Diggon answers,

 Hur was hur while it was day-light; But now hur is a most wretched wight, &c. 

But the most beautiful example of this kind that I ever met with, is in a very valuable piece which I chanced to find among some old manuscripts, entituled a Pastoral Ballad, which I think, for its nature and simplicity, may (notwithstanding the modesty of the title) be allowed a perfect Pastoral. It is composed in the Somersetshire dialect, and the names such as are proper to the country people. It may be observed, as a farther beauty of this Pastoral, the words Nymph, Dryad, Naiad, Fawn,