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WHERE the profeffed intention of the poet is the description of natural ob jects, it cannot be doubted that every fabulous idea fhould be religioufly a voided. Thus, it has been remarked by Mr. Pennant, in his British Zoology, that Virgil, who, in fpeaking figuratively of the fwan as the poet's bird, afcribes to it its ufual mufical attributes, when he mentions it under its proper character of a water-fowl, gives it the harsh note really belonging to that order of birds.

Dant fonitum rauci per ftagna loquacia cygni.
En. IX. 458.
The hoarfe fwans fcream along the founding marfh.

On the other hand, Lucretius has adopted the fabulous notion of the fwan, even in the exemplication of a philofo

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phical propofition. Speaking of the different nature of founds, he fays,

Nec fimili penetrant aureis primordia forma,
Quom tuba depreffo graviter fub murmure mugit,
Aut roboant raucum retrocita cornua bombum,
Valibus et cycni gelidis orti ex Heliconis
Cum liquidam tollunt lugubri voce querelam.

Nor are the figures of the feeds alike,

LIB. IV.

Which from the grave and murm'ring trumpet ftrike,

To those of dying fwans, whose latest breath
In mournful ftrains laments approaching death.
CREECH.

AND in another paffage he blends this fiction with reality in a manner equally injudicious.

Parvus ut eft cycni melior canor, ille gruum quam Clamor, in ætheriis difperfus nubibus Auftri.

IBID.

As

As the low warbling of the fwan excels

The crane's loud clangor, fcatter'd thro' the - clouds. *

THIS latter paffage, as well as the line above quoted from Virgil, is part of a fimile; whence I take occafion to remark, that, as it is the business of every figure of comparison either to illustrate or to enforce the fimple idea, it is certainly requifite that they should be founded upon circumftances to which the mind of the reader can affent; otherwife they can produce little effect. The writer of Scriblerus gives a ludicrous example of a fimile built upon fiction.

Thus have I seen in Araby the bleft

A phoenix couch'd upon her funeral nest;

*CREECH's tranflation of thefe lines is fo very inadequate as to give no idea of the original.

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a fight which neither the author, nor any one else, ever did fee. Obvious as the abfurdity here is, the following paffage in Milton, though written quite in the spirit of that divine poet, ftands upon the very fame ground of cenfure,

As when a gryffon thro' the wilderness
With winged courfe, o'er hill or moory dale
Purfues the Arimafpian, who by stealth
Has from his wakeful cuftody purloin'd
The guarded gold.

PARAD. LOST.

PERHAPS, in a modern writer we fhould require an adherence to truth, even in the representation of those higher and lefs obvious parts of the œconomy of nature which come under the furvey of philofophy. The Copernican theory of the folar fyftem has been now long enough establifhed to take place

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of the Ptolemaic even in poetical allufion; and the fun, tranquilly feated in the centre of its vaft dependencies, cheering, invigorating, and animating the whole, may, on every occafion of fublime imagery, fupercede the chariot of Phoebus, for ever painfully dragged round the petty globe we inhabit. How inexcufable is the reafoning, the philofophical Dr. Young in adopting an abfurd notion entertained by fome of the fathers, that the final conflagra-. tion of the world will begin at midnight; as if it were poffible for night at any one instant to be univerfal on the globe, or an equal portion of the earth were not always illuminated by the fun!

At midnight, when mankind is wrapt in peace, And worldly fancy feeds on golden dreams,

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