s through the heavens.]

TRANSLATIONS

FROM

OVID.

Great is the change in passing from Statius to Ovid; from force to
facility of style; from thoughts and images which are too much studied
and unnatural to such as are obvious, careless, and familiar. Ovid seems
to have had the merit of inventing this beautiful species of writing
epistles under feigned names. It is a high improvement on the Greek
elegy, to which its dramatic form renders it much superior. The judgment
of the writer must chiefly appear by opening the complaint of the person
introduced, just at such a period of time, as will give occasion for the
most tender sentiments, and the most sudden, and violent turns of
passion to be displayed. Ovid may perhaps be blamed for a sameness of
subjects in these epistles of his heroines; and his epistles are
likewise too long, which circumstance has forced him into a repetition
and languor in the sentiments. On the whole the epistle before us is
translated by Pope with faithfulness and with elegance, and much excels
any Dryden translated in the volume he published, several of which were
done by some "of the mob of gentlemen that wrote with ease,"--that is,
Sir C. Scrope, Caryll, Pooly, Wright, Tate, Buckingham, Cooper, and
other careless rhymers. Lord Somers translated Dido to AEneas, and
Ariadne to Theseus. Though I regret the hours our poet spent in
translating Ovid and Statius, yet it has given us an opportunity of
admiring his good sense and judgment, in not suffering his taste and
style, in his succeeding works, to be infected with the faults of these
two writers.--WARTON.

Warton says, "The judgment of the writer must chiefly appear by opening
the complaint of the person introduced at such a period of time as will
give occasion for the most tender sentiments." How beautifully is this
displayed in Pope's Epistle to Abelard, a poem that has another most
interesting circumstance, which Ovid appears, as well as our Drayton, to
have neglected,--I mean the introduction of appropriate and descriptive
imagery, which relieves and recreates the fancy by the pictures, and by
the landscapes which accompany the characters. Ovid, in this Epistle,
seems not insensible to the effect of the introduction of such scenes;
and the Leucadian rock, the _antra nemusque_, the aquatic lotus, the
sacred pellucid fountain, and particularly the genius of the place, the
Naiad, addressing the despairing Sappho (which circumstance