Here is no mention of the Moors, who were by ho means a dreaded enemy. But perhaps in mentioning the Moors he had in his thoughts the following paffage, " Acer et MAURI peditis cruentum "Vultus in hoftem." L. I. Od. 2. But here the critics have judiciously red MARSI. So that Johnson is very unlucky, in overlooking the MARSIANS, and in their room fubftituting the MOORS. In Shakespeare's K. Henry V. A& IV. Henry thus apoftrophizes ceremony, "And what art thou, thou idol, Ceremony; What is thy [r. the] foul of adoration ? "Art thou ought elfe but place, degree and form, "Creating awe and fear in other men ?" What is the foul of adoration, i. e. what real worth, what fubftantial good is there in it? The printer miftook fome stroke of the pen at the end of the; or thy in the preceding line caught his eye, and occafioned the error in the following verfe.-A very ridiculous correction is proposed in a late edition, "What is thy toll, o adoration ?" Shakespeare ufes foul for what is real, fubftantial, &c. in the fame play, There is fome foul of goodnefs in things evil, "Would men obfervingly diftil it out.” Some foul of goodness, i. e. fome real good. In a Midfum mer Night's Dream, A& III. " Hel. "Hal. 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 Meafure for Measure, A&t 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 abfense to supply." with Special foul, particularly and specially SPECIAMENTE. Here too the editor changes foul into roll. 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 Ηκω, τὸ σόν γε προσκοπέμενα, γύναι. "Ego tamen ne propter haec quidem defeffus amicorum "gratiâ venio, prospecturus tibi, o mulier." What conftruction is this ? Φίλοις ἥκω· befide ἀπειρηκέναι is, animo concidiffe, animum defpondiffe, &c. I imagine the poet gave it, día nw, I come your friend: as we fay 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 fonnet to the foldier to fpare his house: The great Emathian conqueror did spare "The house of Pindarus." We must read, bid fpare. 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 difpleased to see what the learned Andreas Schottus has faid on this subject; having cited that well-known verse of Cicero, "fortuNATAM, NATAM me confule Romam! He adds, "Qua fyllabarum iteratio vocis definentis et incho"antis tantum abeft ut critici vitio dandum exiftimaverint, utvetiam 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 illa poeta ad calculos revocass runt. Παρήχησιν autem voce παρήχημα Rhetorum filii “Schema nominant ảnò rỡ wagnxew. Budæo 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 subject, 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, "fpecially 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: "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 verse beginning with C thus: "Carmina Clarifona 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 verfe, "and 66 and use it not very much, as he that faid by way of epithete, "The fmoakie 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 ministery 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 "wryté nowe adaies (for his verses ende not alike) but the nature of hys miter is, to have three wordes at the leafte in every verfe which begyn with fome one letter, as for ensample, the firste two verses of the boke renne upon S, as thus ; "In a fomer feafon when fette was the funne I hope me into forobbes, as I a fhepe were. The next runeth upon H, as thus ; "In habite as an hermite unholy of werekes, &c. "This thing noted the metre fhall 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 |