Within what fountain's craggy cell
Delights the goddess Health to dwell?
were compared, as to its subject, with that of the Theban bard, on the illness of Hiero, which opens with a wish that Chiron were yet living, in order that the poet might consult him on the case of the Syracusan monarch; and in its form, with that in which he asks of his native city, in whom of all her heroes she most delighted.
Among the odes, some of which might more properly be termed idylliums, The Hamlet is of uncommon beauty; the landscape is truly English, and has the truth and tenderness of Gainsborough's pencil. Those To a Friend on his leaving a Village in Hampshire, and the First of April, are entitled to similar praise. The Crusade, The Grave of King Arthur, and most of the odes composed for the court, are in a higher strain. In the Ode written at Vale Royal Abbey, is a striking image, borrowed from some lent verses, written by Archbishop Markham, and printed in the second volume of that collection.
High o'er the trackless heath, at midnight seen,
No more the windows ranged in long array
(Where the tall shaft and fretted arch between
Thick ivy twines) the taper'd rites betray.
Prodidit areanas arcta fenestra faces.
His sonnets have been highly and deservedly commended by no less competent a judge than Mr. Coleridge. They are alone sufficient to prove (if any proof were wanting) that this form of composition is not unsuited to our language. One of our longest, as it is one of our most beautiful poems, the Faerie Queene, is written in a stanza which demands the continual recurrence of an equal number of rhymes; and the chief objection to our adopting the sonnet is the paucity of our rhymes.
The lines to Sir Joshua Reynolds are marked by the happy turn of the compliment, and by the strength and harmony of the versification, at least as far as the formal couplet measure will admit of those qualities. They need not fear a comparison with the verses addressed by Dryden to Kneller, or by Pope to Jervas.
His Latin compositions are nearly as excellent as his English. The few hendecasyllables he has left, have more of the vigour of Catullus than those by Flaminio; but Flaminio excels him in delicacy. The Mons Catharinae contains nearly the same images as Gray's Ode on a Prospect of Eton College. In the word "cedrinae," which occurs in the verses on Trinity College Chapel, he has, we believe, erroneously made the penultimate long. Dr. Mant has observed another mistake in his use of the word "Tempe" as a feminine noun, in the lines translated from Akenside. When in his sports with his brother's scholars at Winchester he made their exercises for them, he used to ask the boy how many faults he would have:—one such would have been sufficient for a lad near the head of the school.
His style in prose, though marked by a character of magnificence, is at times stiff and encumbered. He is too fond of alliteration in prose as well as in verse; and the cadence of his sentences is too evidently laboured.
FOOTNOTES
[1] There is a little memoir of James St. Amand, in the preface, that
will interest some readers. He was of Lincoln College, Oxford, about
1705, where he had scarcely remained a year, before his ardour for
Greek literature induced him to visit Italy, chiefly with a view of
searching MSS. that might serve for an edition of Theocritus. In
Italy, before he had reached his twentieth year, he was well known
to the learned world, and had engaged the esteem of many eminent
men; among others, of Vincenzo Gravina, Niccolo Valletto, Fontanini,
Quirino, Anton Maria Salvini, and Henry Newton, the English
Ambassador to the Duke of Tuscany. Their letters to him are
preserved in the Bodleian. By his researches into the MSS. of
Italian libraries, he assisted his learned friends, Kuster, Le
Clerc, Potter, Hudson, and Kennet, and other literary characters of
that time, in their several pursuits. He then returned to England by
way of Geneva and Paris, well laden with treasures derived from the
foreign libraries, all which, with a large collection of valuable
books, he bequeathed to the Bodleian. He died about 1750. He
desisted from his intention of publishing Theocritus, either from
ill health, or weariness of his work, or some fear about its
success. His preparations for this edition, together with some notes
on Pindar (an edition of which he also meditated), Aristophanes, the
Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius, Demosthenes, and others, remain
in the Bodleian.
Dr. Shaw, in his edition of Apollonius Rhodius, has since made use
of his notes on that poet, and pays a tribute to his critical
abilities in the preface.
[2] Warton's distinction between them is well imagined.
"Sinillis est Theocritus amplo cuidam pascuo per se satis foecundo,
herbis pluribus frugiferis floribusque pulchris abundanti, dulcibus
etiam fluviis uvido: similis Virgilius horto distincto nitentibus
areolis; ubi larga floruni copia, sed qui studiose dispositi,
curaque meliore nutriti, atque exculti diligenter, olim hue a pascuo
illo majore transferebantur."