The Sun.
London, England, 1819-06-18 00:00:00

tion.

BOOK vrir.

L. As clang'd the Chieftain's arms, and rush'd his car,"
&c.

rtque acre; cuncussit equusy utque impulit arma.

The clash ng upon the shield with the spear,
which I conceive to be what is meant in this place
by " arnin," was a common signal of
warlike rage and defiance practised by the Gre-
cian and the Roman soldiers before they proceeded
to battle ; and I notice it merely to point the at-
tention of my Reader to a very noble passage in
the First Book of Paradise Lost, where the Le-
gions of Satan empress, in a similar manner, their
warlike defiance of Heaven
He said ; and, to confirm his words, out flew
Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs
Of mighty cherubim; the sudden blaze
Far round illumined ; highly they raged
Against the highest, and fierce with grasped arms
Clash's, on their sounding shields the din of war,
Hurling defiance towards the vault of Heaven."
L. 38,—" His limbs an azure mantle loosely dress'd,
And his green locks a crown of reeds compress'd."

I-pause for a moment on this description of the
River-God, 'fiber, merely for the purpose of re-
marking on a Note of Dr. Warton's upon the pas-
sage which has just met my eye. "To this re-
mark" (a remark of no consequence by Spence)
says Dr. W. " I shall beg leave to subjoin, that
the moderns, as well as the ancients, are apt to
fall into this mixed allegory ; not only in speak-
ing of Rivers and River-Gods, but in (" on")
other subjects, where the Deity.presiding over,
and the thing presided over, are confounded and
put indiscriminately one for the other. Thus
Thomson :---

" Crown'd with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf,
While Autumn --"

Thus far %ve have some idea of a personage re-
in c3citi lug tile 3easoti, Autumn ceown'd with a
sickle (which by the way is odd) and the Wheat-
sheaf. But what follows ?
Nodding o'er the yellow plain,
Comes jovial on".—

" Here • nodding' applied to the god, Au-
tumn, is plainly an epithet belonging to the corn,
over which he presided," &c.
In this remark of his, this ingenious man, for
whose taste I feel much respect, is unquestion-
ably wrong for that part of the imagery which
he notices only as odd, is strangely incongruous,
and that part which he censures is perfectly ac-
curate. To be crowned with a sickle affirms an
absurdity; but 1 nodding' is a human action, and
strictly consistent with the personMlity (not Deity)
attributed by the Poet to Autumn. If the epithet
had been, waving, the critical observation would
have been just. May I trifle a little longer on
this subject, and suggest, that if Thomson bad
written Crowo'd by the sickle," i. e. by the in-
strumentality of the sickle, as a Conqueror may
be said to be crowned in consequence of the
power of his sword, tl►e expression, with some
effort of ingenuity, might have been defended.
From our Tiber Pope has drawn his Thames in
his Windsor Forest :

" High in the midst upon his urn reclined,
(His sea-green mantle floating in the wind,)
The God appeared."
L. I, 2.—At the new sight of ships and martial brass,
The waves and forests wonder as they pass."

This navigation of the Tiber is described with
much picturesque effect. Nothing can be more
beautiful than the picture which it here offered to
the imagination, of armed -.'essels gliding amid
forests over the bosom of a placid and sequestered
river, and presenting, to the pacific scene for the
first time, a spectacle of warlike exhibition. The
contrast of the cottages of Evander with the pro-
leptical view of their successors, ti►e palaces of
Rome ; the address of "Eneas to the Arcadian
King, whom be finch sacrificiug in a grove, with
the reply of the venerable Sovereign, and the fol-
lowing story of the monster, Cacus, are all in a
strain of equal beauty and poetry, conceived by
the mind, and executed with the hand, of a master.