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 himfelf: But that required more time and application than I was willing to beftow, 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, seem to be inventions of the fame kind, and might be defigned to fill the reader with aftonishment and concern.' Homer's giving fpeech 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 these shadowy 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 defcription of them is a fine allegory: Luctus et ultrices pofuere cubilia Curæ, Morbi, Senectus, Metus, — Fames,-Ege ftas, — Letum, — Labos, Sopor, - Bellum,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 “Yπ » Cával, 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 use of Sleep, and Death, and Fear, and Difcord, &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, Pag. xvIII. Hic, prope Chaucerum, fitus eft Spenferius, illi, Hic prope Chaucerum Spensere poeta poetam Conderis, et verfu quam tumulo propior, Anglica, te vivo, vixit plaufitque Poëfis; Nunc moritura timet, te moriente, mori. Ille hic eft Raphael, timuit quo fofpite vinci The 1 The author of these paltry verses has not only borrowed the thought which he has fo ill expreffed in the last distich, but that which is in the lines before it; for I remember to have seen somewhere this Epitaph on Sannazarius, made by Bembus: Da facro cineri flores: hic ille Maroni Communicated Communicated by a FRIEND of the EDITOR. SIR, IF the few following Strictures on Spenfer meet with approbation, they are at your fervice, and may form no unwelcome Appendix to your Father's REMARKS upon this his favourite and much-favoured author. I find them, in manuScript, on the blank leaves of a printed copy of those Remarks. They were many years fince drawn up by a late writer; they appear to be equally elegant and judicious; and have never yet been published. I am, Sir, your's B. SPENSER'S |