When with much Art and Pain, Torn from the cruel Rock his Oars half lost, And one Side maim'd, Sergestus tugg'd along His slow dishonour'd Skiff.
Can any Thing move slower than the Verse, or with greater Art? But what deserves all Admiration, or rather what exceeds it, is, the same Poet's Description of the Giants Attempt against Heaven, by heaping Mountain upon Mountain.
[80] Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam Scilicet, atque Ossæ frondosum involvere Olympum.
Thrice they assay'd on Pelion to heave Ossa; on Ossa still more high to roll Woody Olympus.
How the Verse labours! Conati imponere—Pelio Ossam—Without any Elision of the Vowels, it moves on with Difficulty, and totters, as it were, with an unweildy Load, to represent to us the stupendous Image of the straining of the Giants. In the Words, atque Ossæ frondosum involvere Olympum, there seems to be a Redundancy of Syllables, and we see in them the enormous Superstructure rise higher and higher, by one Layer of Mountains heaped upon another.
Since, then, it is the Nature of Poetry to express the Things it describes by the very Sound of the Verse; how little Share of the Spirit of it have they, who, by an unnatural Constraint, smother their Thoughts with Words that are dumb to the Sense? And yet this is a Fault many are guilty of; who will set before you a rapid Torrent in the slow Length of an Alexandrine; rural Pleasures, in Words that represent the Clangor of a Trumpet; the Din of War, with the soft and easy Strain of Elegy; the Triumphs of Love, with the rough and unpolish'd Address of a Clown; and debase this divine Art with a thousand such Contradictions. A Lover of Virgil, that reads him with Discernment, will never fall into these, and the like Enormities; for which Reason, 'tis from him I produced the several Examples that have illustrated each Part of this Dissertation. No one can have Reason to complain of their Number; for nothing else could have so display'd the hidden Charms of Poetry. Let me recommend it, therefore, to my young Audience, who are fired with the Love of so engaging an Art, to make him the Bent of all their Care and Application; let Virgil be often in your Hand, and never out of your Thoughts,
Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna.
Read him by Day, and meditate by Night. Pope.
Sixth Lecture.
It is a common Opinion, that those mutilated Verses that occur up and down in the Æneis, were left so by the Author out of Design, and to add a certain Beauty to his Style. I am rather inclined to think them the Marks of an imperfect Work, and that they would have been fill'd up by the Author, if he had put his last Hand to that divine Performance. It is an agreed Point, that the Georgics are more correct than the Æneis; now in them we don't find any of these Mutilations, and in the Æneis one that leaves the Sense imperfect. In a Place or two, indeed, some seeming Reason may be assign'd for this sudden breaking off; viz. to represent more naturally the Thing in Description. As in this: