Page:The Dunciad - Alexander Pope (1743).djvu/44

Rh tastes, our author writ his Eloise, in opposition to it; but forgot innocence and virtue: If you take away her tender thoughts, and her fierce defires, all the rest is of no value." In which, methinks, his judgment resembleth that of a French taylor on a Villa and gardens by the Thames: "All this is very fine, but take away the river, and it is good for nothing."

But very contrary hereunto was the opinion of

himself, saying in his Alma , O Abelard! ill fated youth, Thy tale will justify this truth. But well I weet thy cruel wrong Adorns a nobler Poet's song: Dan Pope, for thy misfortune griev'd, With kind concern and skill has weav'd A silken web; and ne'er shall fade Its colours: gently has he laid The mantle o'er thy sad distress, And Venus shall the texture bless, &c.

Come we now to his translation of the The Iliad, celebrated by numerous pens, yet shall it suffice to mention the indefatigable

Who (tho' otherwise a severe censurer of our author) yet styleth this a "laudable translation ." That ready writer,

in his forementioned Essay, frequently commends the same. And the painful

thus extols it, "The spirit of Homer breathes all through this translation.—I am in doubt, whether I should most admire the justness to the original, or the force and beauty of the language, or the sounding variety of the numbers: But when I find all these meet, it puts me in mind of what the poet says of one of his heroes, That he alone rais'd and flung with ease a weighty stone, that two common men could not lift from the ground; just so, one single person has performed in this translation, what I once despaired to have seen done by the force of several masterly hands. Indeed the same gentleman appears to have chang'd his sentiment in his Essay