DRYDEN.

Freed from his keepers, thus with broken reins,
The wanton courser prances o'er the plains:
Or in the pride of youth, o'erleaps the mounds,
And snuffs the females in forbidden grounds.
Or seeks his wat'ring in the well-known flood,
To quench his thirst, and cool his fiery blood:
He swims luxuriant in the liquid plain;
And o'er his shoulders flows his waving main.
He neighs, he snorts, he bears his head on high;
Before his ample chest, the frothy waters fly.

PITT.

So the gay pamper'd steed with loosen'd reins,
Breaks from the stall, and pours along the plains;
With large smooth strokes he rushes to the flood,
Bathes his bright sides, and cools his fiery blood;
Neighs as he flies, and tossing high his head,
Snuffs the fair females in the distant mead;
At every motion o'er his neck reclin'd,
Plays his redundant main, and dances in the wind.

From the above specimens, our readers may determine for themselves to whose translation they would give the preference. Critics, like historians, should divest themselves of prejudice: they should never be misguided by the authority of a great name, nor yield that tribute to prescription, which is only due to merit. Mr. Pitt, no doubt, had many advantages above Dryden in this arduous province: As he was later in the attempt, he had consequently the version of Dryden to improve upon. He saw the errors of that great poet, and avoided them; he discovered his beauties, and improved upon them; and as he was not impelled by necessity, he had leisure to revise, correct, and finish his excellent work.

The Revd. and ingenious Mr. Joseph Warton has given to the world a compleat edition of Virgil's works made English. The Aeneid by Mr. Pitt: The Eclogues, Georgics, and notes on the whole, by himself; with some new observations by Mr. Holdsworth, Mr. Spence, and others. This is the compleatest English dress, in which Virgil ever appeared. It is enriched with a dissertation on the VIth Book of the Aeneid, by Warburton. On the Shield of Aeneas, by Mr. William Whitehead. On the Character of Japis, by the late Dr. Atterbury bishop of Rochester; and three Essays on Pastoral, Didactic, and Epic Poetry, by Mr. Warton.

* * * * *

Mr. HAMMOND.

This Gentleman, known to the world by the Love Elegies, which some years after his death were published by the Earl of Chesterfield, was the son of a Turkey merchant, in the city of London. We cannot ascertain where he received his education; but it does not appear that he was at any of the universities. Mr. Hammond was early preferred to a place about the person of the late Prince of Wales, which he held till an unfortunate accident stript him of his reason, or at least so affected his imagination, that his senses were greatly disordered. The unhappy cause of his calamity was a passion he entertained for one Miss Dashwood, which proved unsuccessful. Upon this occasion it was that he wrote his Love Elegies, which have been much celebrated for their tenderness. The lady either could not return his passion with a reciprocal fondness, or entertained too ambitious views to settle her affections upon him, which he himself in some of his Elegies seems to hint; for he frequently mentions her passion for gold and splendour, and justly treats it as very unworthy a fair one's bosom. The chief beauty of these Elegies certainly consists in their being written by a man who intimately felt the subject; for they are more the language of the heart than of the head. They have warmth, but little poetry, and Mr. Hammond seems to have been one of those poets, who are made so by love, not by nature.

Mr. Hammond died in the year 1743, in the thirty-first year of his age, at Stow, the seat of his kind patron, the lord Cobham, who honoured him with a particular intimacy. The editor of Mr. Hammond's Elegies observes, that he composed them before he was 21 years of age; a period, says he, when fancy and imagination commonly riot at the expence of judgment and correctness. He was sincere in his love, as in his friendship; he wrote to his mistress, as he spoke to his friends, nothing but the true genuine sentiments of his heart. Tibullus seems to have been the model our author judiciously preferred to Ovid; the former writing directly from the heart to the heart, the latter too often yielding and addressing himself to the imagination.