tation
or stiffness. Waller thought this a beauty; and Dryden was very fond of
it. Some late writers, under the notion of imitating these two great
versifiers in this point, run into downright affectation, and are guilty
of the most improper and ridiculous expressions, provided there be but
an alliteration. It is very remarkable, that an affectation of this
beauty is ridiculed by Shakespear, in Love's Labour Lost, Act II. where
the Pedant Holofernes says,

I will something affect the letter, for it argues facility.--
The praiseful princess pierced, and prickt.--

Mr. Upton, in his letter concerning Spencer, observes, that alliteration
is ridiculed too in Chaucer, in a passage which every reader does not
understand.

The Ploughman's Tale is written, in some measure, in imitation of
Pierce's Ploughman's Visions; and runs chiefly upon some one letter, or
at least many stanza's have this affected iteration, as

A full sterne striefe is stirr'd now,--
For some be grete grown on grounde.

When the Parson therefore in his order comes to tell his tale, which
reflected on the clergy, he says,

--I am a southern man,
I cannot jest, rum, ram, riff, by letter,
And God wote, rime hold I but little better.

Ever since the publication of Mr. Pitt's version of the Aeneid, the
learned world has been divided concerning the just proportion of merit,
which ought to be ascribed to it. Some have made no scruple in defiance
of the authority of a name, to prefer it to Dryden's, both in exactness,
as to his author's sense, and even in the charms of poetry. This
perhaps, will be best discovered by producing a few shining passages of
the Aeneid, translated by these two great masters.

In biographical writing, the first and most essential principal is
candour, which no reverence for the memory of the dead, nor affection
for the virtues of the living should violate. The impartiality which we
have endeavoured to observe through this work, obliges us to declare,
that so far as our judgment may be trusted, the latter poet has done
most justice to Virgil; that he mines in Pitt with a lustre, which
Dryden wanted not power, but leisure to bestow; and a reader, from
Pitt's version, will both acquire a more intimate knowledge of Virgil's
meaning, and a more exalted idea of his abilities.--Let not this detract
from the high representations we have endeavoured in some other places
to make of Dryden. When he undertook Virgil, he was s