VIRG., AEn. x. 821.
The pious prince beheld young Lausus dead;
He grieved, he wept, then grasped his hand and said,
"Poor hapless youth! what praises can be paid
To worth so great?"
DRYDEN.
I shall take another opportunity to consider the other parts of this
old song.
NEXT ESSAY
- Pendent opera interrupta.
VIRG., AEn. iv. 88.
The works unfinished and neglected lie.
In my last Monday's paper I gave some general instances of those
beautiful strokes which please the reader in the old song of "Chevy-
Chase;" I shall here, according to my promise, be more particular,
and show that the sentiments in that ballad are extremely natural
and poetical, and full of the majestic simplicity which we admire in
the greatest of the ancient poets: for which reason I shall quote
several passages of it, in which the thought is altogether the same
with what we meet in several passages of the "AEneid;" not that I
would infer from thence that the poet, whoever he was, proposed to
himself any imitation of those passages, but that he was directed to
them in general by the same kind of poetical genius, and by the same
copyings after nature.
Had this old song been filled with epigrammatical turns and points
of wit, it might perhaps have pleased the wrong taste of some
readers; but it would never have become the delight of the common
people, nor have warmed the heart of Sir Philip Sidney like the
sound of a trumpet; it is only nature that can have this effect, and
please those tastes which are the most unprejudiced, or the most
refined.
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