THE TEMPLE OF FAME.

77

Finifh’d Ac whole, and labour’d ev'ry part,

With patient touches of unweary’d art:

The Mantuan there in fober triumph fate, 200Compos’d his pofture, and his looks fedate ;

On Homer Hill he fix’d a rev’rend eye,

Great without pride, in modeft majefty.

In living feuipture on the fides were fpreadTheLatian Wars, and haughty Turnus dead; ao 5Eliza firetch’d upon the fun’ral pyre,

Aeneas bending with his aged fire:

Troy flam’d in burning gold, and o’er the throneArms and the man in golden cyphers Ihone.

Four fwans fuflain a car of fiiver bright, a 10Wi th heads advanc’d, and pinions ftretch’d for flight:

NOTES.

by touches offatire fo de1icate,byfo profound a knowledge of the humanheart, by the graces of the comic, which perpetually fuccced the ftrokesof the terrible ; in fhort, by fuch innumerable beauties of every kind,that he has found out the fecret of maltin'* an agreeable wonder. Letevery reader aik bimfelf what he would think, if he fhould read forthe firft time the Iliad and TaflTo’s poem, without knowing the namesof their authors, and the times when their works were coinpofed,and determine of them mciely by the degree of pleafure they eachof them excited. Would he not give the entire preference to Taflb ?Would he not find in the Italian more conduct and oeconomy, moreinterefting circumflances, more variety and exs&nefs, more gracesand embellifhinents, and move of that fofmefs which eafes, relieves,and adds a luflre to the fublinie ? I queftion whether they will evenbear a corop3rifou a few ages hence.

Vfr. 210 . Fourfwans fuflain, etc.] Pindar beingfeated io a chariot,alludes to the chariot-races re celebrated in the Grecian games, 'lirefwans are emblems of Poetry, their foaring pofture intitoate3 thefublimity and aciivity of Lis genius. Neptune prefided over theIfthmian, and ]upitcr over the Olympian games. \V.

The chara&cr of Pindar , as commonly given, feems not to be wellunderftood. VVe arc perpetually told of the boidnefs and the violenceof his transitions j whereas, on a dofer infpt&ion, they appear eafy