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which we now call ALEXANDRINES, the French heroic measure; the name being derived from Alexander, the hero of the piece, or from Alexander, the most celebrated of the four poets concerned in this work. These were the most Fauchet highly

applauded poets of that age. commends this poem; particularly a passage where a Cavalier is struck to the ground with a lance, who, says the old bard,

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Du long comme il etoit, mesura la campagne.

Which is not inferior to Virgil's

Hesperiam metire jacens.

One would not imagine this line had been written so early as the middle of the twelfth century. A great and truly learned antiquary has remarked, for the honour of our country, that about this time, 1160, appeared the first traces

of any theatre.

"A monk called Geoffry, who was afterwards abbot of St. Alban's in England, employed in the education of youth, made his

pupils

pupils represent, with proper scenes and dresses, tragedies of piety. The subject of the first dramatic piece, was the miracles of saint Catharine, which appeared long before any of our representations of the MYSTERIES.*

SECTION

* The president Henault, Histoire de France. Tom. I. p. 151. a Paris 1749.

SECTION VI.

OF THE EPISTLE OF SAPPHO TO PHAON, AND OF ELOISA TO ABELARD.

It is no small merit in Ovid, to have invented * this beautiful species of writing epistles under feigned characters. It is a high improvement on the Greek elegy; to which its dramatic nature renders it greatly superior. It is, indeed, no other than a passionate soliloquy, in which the mind gives vent to the distresses and emotions under which it labours: but, by being directed and addressed to a particular person, it gains a degree of propriety, that the best conducted soliloquy in a tragedy must ever want. Our impatience under any pressures of grief,

and

* Propertius, however, has one composition of this sort, entitled, Epistola Arethusæ ad Lycotam. Lib. iv. Eleg. 3. Vulpius observes, that Horace never once mentions Propertius with approbation, but glances at him with ridicule in the pas sage, Quis nisi Callimachus. Ep. 2. L. 2. v. 100,

His

and disorder of mind, makes such passionate expostulations with the persons supposed to cause such uneasinesses, very natural. Judgment is chiefly shewn, by opening the interesting complaint just at such a period of time, as will give occasion for the most tender sentiments, and the most sudden and violent turns of passion, to be displayed. Ovid may, perhaps, be blamed for a sameness of subjects in these epistles of his heroines, whose distresses are almost all occasioned by their lovers forsaking them. epistles are likewise too long; which circumstance has forced him into a repetition and languor in the sentiments. It would be a pleasing task, and conduce to the formation of a good taste, to shew how differently Ovid, and the Greek tragedians, have made Medea, Phædra, and Deianira speak, on the very same occasions. Such a comparison would abundantly manifest the FANCY and wIT of Ovid, and the JUDGMENT and NATURE of Euripides and Sophocles. If the character of Medea was not better supported in the tragedy which Ovid is said to have produced, and of which Quintilian speaks so advantageously,

vantageously, than it is in her epistle to Jason, one may venture to declare, that the Romans would not yet have been vindicated from their inferiority to the Greeks in tragic poesy.

The Epistle before us is translated by POPE, with faithfulness, and with elegance, and much excels any that Dryden translated in the volume he published; several of which were done by some "of the mob of gentlemen that wrote with ease;" that is, Sir C. Scroop, Caryl, Pooly, Wright, Tate, Buckingham, Cooper, and other careless rhymers. A good translation of these epistles is as much wanted as one of Juvenal; for, out of sixteen satires of that poet, Dryden himself translated but six. We can now boast of happy translations in verse, of almost all the great poets of antiquity; whilst the French have been poorly contented with only prose translations of Homer and Horace, which, says Cervantes, can no more resemble the original, than the wrong side of tapestry can represent the right. The inability of the French tongue to express many Greek or Roman ideas with facility and grace, is here

visible;

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