referable--for not a few, milk--and for some, milk and water. But not
with that latter amalgam did Hannibal force his way through the Alps.

But, softly--the Doctor compares the violence and vehemence of Pope's
satire--no--not the violence and vehemence, but the height--to
water--but to water rare among the liquid elements. "And the excessive
height to which it is carried, and which therefore I may compare to that
marvellous column of boiling water near Mount Hecla in Iceland, thrown
upwards, _above ninety feet_, by the force of subterraneous fire." And
he adds in a note, to please the incredulous, "Sir Joseph Banks, our
great philosophical traveller, had the satisfaction of seeing this
wonderful phenomenon."

"What are the impressions," eloquently asks the inspired Joseph "left
upon the mind after a perusal of this poem? Contempt, aversion vexation,
and anger. No sentiments that enlarge, ennoble, move, or mend the heart!
Insomuch so, that I know a person whose name would be an ornament to
these papers, if I were suffered to insert it, who, after reading a book
of the _Dunciad_, always soothes himself, as he calls it, by turning to
a canto of the _Faery Queene_." There is no denying that satire is apt
to excite the emotions the Doctor complains of, and few more strongly
than the _Dunciad_. Yet what would it be without them--and what should
we be? But other emotions, too, are experienced at some of the games;
and some of an exalted kind, by innumerable passages throughout the
poem. Were it not so, this would be a saturnine world indeed. Would we
have had the name of the wise gentleman, that it might ornament these
papers, who so frequently indulged in "contempt, aversion, vexation, and
anger" over Pope, that he might soothe himself, as he called it, with
Spenser. We wonder if he occasionally left the bosom of the _Faery
Queene_ for that of the Goddess of Dulness.

"This is not the case with that very delightful poem _Mac-Flecnoe_, from
which Pope has borrowed many hints and images and ideas. But Dryden's
poem was the offspring of contempt, and Pope's of indignation; one is
full of mirth, and the other of malignity. A vein of pleasantry is
uniformly preserved through the whole of _Mac-Flecnoe_, and the piece
begins and ends in the same key." That very beautiful and delightful
poem, _Mac-Flecnoe!_ That very pretty and agreeable waterfall, Niagara!
That very elegant and attractive crater of Mount Vesuvius! That very
inter