"Hel. Can you not hate me, as I know you do, "But you must join in fouls to mock me too ?”

join in fouls, i. e. unite together, heartily and in earnest. The late editor reads, join infolents: which is below all kind of notice.-In Measure for Measure, Act I.

"I fay bid come before us Angelo :

"What figure of us, think you, he will bear? "For you must know we have with Special foul "Elected him our absense to supply.'

with Special foul, particularly and specially SPECIAMENTE. Here too the editor changes foul into rell.—But to return. The blunders above mention'd feem entirely owing to the wrong gueffes of the printer, or tranfcriber. Some ftroke of the pen occafion'd the following corrupt reading in the Medaea of Euripides, 459.

Ὅμως δὲ κακ τῶνδ ̓ ἐκ ἀπειρηκὼς ΦΙΛΟΙΣ

Ἥπω, τὸ σόν γε προσκοπέμενα, γύναι.

Ego tamen ne propter haec quidem defeffus amicorum "gratiâ venio, profpecturus tibi, o mulier." What confruction is this ? Φίλοις ἥκω· befide απειρηκέναι is, animo concidiffe, animum defpondiffe, &c. I imagine the poet gave it, dín® nxw, I come your friend: as we say in English. But printers can blunder, as well as tranfcribers in copy after copy. In Milton's Samfon Agonistes, . 1650. the Meffenger is defcribing Samfon's pulling the temple on the

Philiftins.

"Those two maffie pillars

"With horrible confufion to and fro

"He tugg'd, he took, 'till down they came, and drew "The whole roof after them "

We must correct, he shook. Again, in his elegant sonnet to the foldier to spare his house :

"The great Emathian conqueror did spare

"The houfe of Pindarus."

We must read, bid spare. As Mr. Theobald and Dr. Bentley often tell us, that they had the happiness to make many corrections, which they find afterwards fupported by the authority of better copies; fo with the fame vanity, I can affure the reader, I made the above emendations in Milton, and found, after all, the paffages corrupted by one J. Tonfon.

Page 268. But whatever beauty this alliteration might have, yet the affectation of it must appear ridiculous; for poems are not made by mechanical rules and it was ridiculed as long ago as the times of Ennius.

O Tite tute Tati tibi tante tyranne tulifti.

And by Shakespeare in his Midfummer-Night's dream, Act V.

"Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful "blade,

"He bravely broach'd his boiling bloody breast."

Perhaps the reader may not be displeased to see what the learned Andreas Schottus has faid on this subject; having cited that well-known verse of Cicero,

"a fortuNATAM, NATAM me confule Romam!

He adds, "Qua fyllabarum iteratio vocis definentis et incho"antis tantum abeft ut critici vitio dandum exiftimaverint,

* ut etiam imitandum fibi duxerint, quòd pofteriores etiam "poetas mire id affectaffe obfervarint. Unus enim omnium

inftar Tibullus, eques Romanus, et cafti fermonis ac fuavis "auctor, plerumque fyllabas ftudio geminat: ut ne longius "abeam, ftatim in limine :

"ME MEA paupertas vitæ traducet inerti.

"Qualia M. Ant. Muretus ibidem et Joannes Garzonius Ve« netus plura alibi in cultissimo illo poeta ad calculos revocass runt. Παρήχησιν autem voce παρήχημα Rhetorum filii "Schema nominant άxò rỡ wagnxe. Budao ADNOMINA

TIONEM, nobis RESULTATIONEM nominare Latinè liceat, "ut in poetis antiquis, præfertim Marone, Jovianus Pon"tanus ALLITERATIONEM folitus eft appellare, &c." If the reader has any curiofity to see more of what he writes on this fubject, he may confult his treatise, intitled, Cicero a Calumniis vindicatus. Cap. X. In the arte of English poefie, printed an. 1589. p. 213. “ye have another man"ner of compofing your metre nothing commendable, specially if it be too much used, and is when our Maker "takes too much delight to fill his verse with wordes beginning all with a letter, as an English rimer that said:

66

"The deadly droppes of darke difdaine
"Do daily drench my due defartes.

"And as the Monke we spake of before, wrote a whole poeme to the honor of Carolus Calvus, every word in "his verfe beginning with C thus:

"Carmina Clarifonæ Calvis cantate camænæ.

"Many of our English Makers use it too much, yet we "confefs it doth not ill but PRETILY BECOMES THE "MEETRE, if ye paffe not two or three words in one verse,

❝ and

"and use it not very much, as he that faid by way of "epithete,

"The Smoakie fighes: the trickling teares.

"And fuch like, for fuch compofition makes the meetre "runne away smoother, and paffeth from the lippes with

more facilitie by ITERATION of a letter than by ALTE"RATION, which alteration of a letter requires an exchange "of miniftery and office in the lippes, teeth or palate, "and doth not the ITERATION." The reader may fee this affected iteration in Douglas's prologue prefixed to the VIII. book of Virgil's Æneid: And in the Plowman's prologue and tale in Chaucer, p. 179. edit. Urry. Pierce Plowman is written wholly after this manner without rime; which is mention'd in the preface. "He wrote altogither "in miter, but not after the maner of our rimers that "wryte nowe adaies (for his verses ende not alike) but the "nature of hys miter is, to have three wordes at the leaste " in every verse which begyn with some one letter, as for enfample, the firfte two verses of the boke renne upon S, as thus ;

"In a fomer feafon when fette was the funne "I shop me into shrobbes, as I a shepe were.

"The next runeth upon H, as thus ;

"In habite as an hermite unholy of werekes, &c.

"This thing noted the metre shall be very plesaunt to read.”

Page 365. DRYDEN fays that MILTON acknowledged to him, that SPENCER was his original: but his original in what, Mr. DRYDEN does not tell us : certainly he was not his original in throwing afide that Gothic bondage of jingle at the

end

end of every line; 'twas the example of our BEST ENGLISH TRAGEDIES bere be followed; HIS HONOURED SHAKESPEARE.]

'Tis hardly poffible, but that a reader of Shakespeare and Milton must have observed a great resemblance both of ftile and fentiment in these two poets: fee above page 217, 218, what is cited from them concerning the variety of the punishments of the damned: other paffages may be eafily pointed out; as for example.

“O for a faulkner's voice

"To lure this taffel gentle back again."

Sh. Romeo and Juliet, A& II.

"O for that warning voice, which he who saw

"Th' Apocalyps, heard cry in heav'n aloud.”

"The heavenly-harness'd team

"Begins his golden progress in the east."

"The Morn- -begins

"Her rofy progress smiling."

Milton, IV, 1.

K. Henry IV. A& III.

Milt. XI, 175.

"As eafy may'ft thou the intrenchant air

"With thy keen fword impress." Macbeth, A& IV. -When vapours fir'd imprefs the air."

Milt. IV, 558.

"And with indented glides did flip away.'

As you Like it, A& IV.

-Not with indented wave

"Prone on the ground. &c."

Milt. IX, 496.

But now fits EXPECTATION in the air."

K, Henry V. A& I.