written; and every learned reader will recollect on this occasion the Pugna Porcorum per P. Porcium Pelagium Poetam, which I wish some of our poetasters would translate, in the true spirit of the original, and praise pigs and pork with all the beauties of alliteration.

The advocates and admirers of this practice have asserted, that it adds significance and strength of expression of their verses: but I fear this boasted energy seldom appears to the reader. The alliteration either remains unregarded, or, if it is very striking, disgusts those who perceive it; and is often in itself, from such a disagreeable cluster of the same letters, harsh and uncouth. There are many instances, where alliteration, though studiously introduced, renders the versification rough and inharmonious; and I will appeal to the greatest lovers of it, whether the folJowing line, where the repetition was scarce intended, is one of the most pleasing in all Virgil's works:

Neu patriæ Validis in Viscera Vertite Vires.

Wound not with Vigour Vast the Vitals of the Veal,

It must be acknowledged, that there is something very mechanical in the whole construction of the numbers in most of our modern poetry. Sound is more attended to than sense, and the words are expected to express more than the sentiment. There are set rules to make verses run off glibly, or drawl slowly on; and I have read many a poem with scarce one tolerable thought in it, that has contained all these excellencies of versification: for which reason I must confess myself no friend to those critics, who analyze words and syllables, and discover latent beauties in every letter, when the author intended that the whole should be taken together. Poetry should seem at least to flow freely from the imagination, and not to be squeezed from the droppings of the brain. If we would endeavour to acquire a full idea of what we mean to describe, we should then of course express ourselves with force, elegance, and perspicuity; and this native strength of expression would have more true energy than elaborate phrases, and a quaint and studied combination of words and letters. Fine numbers are undoubtedly one of the chief beauties in poetry; but to make the sound echo to the sense we should make the sense ourchiefobject. This appears to me to have been the manly practice of the ancients, and of our own Shakspeare, Milton, &c. who breathedthe true spirit of poetry, without having recourse to little tricks and mean artifices which only serve to disgrace it. A good writer, who would be above trifling even with a thought, would never pursue words, and play with letters, but leave such a childish employment for the small fry of mers, who amuse themselves with anagrams and rhycrambo. The true poet trusts to his natural ear and strong conception, and knows that the versification is adapted to the sentiment, without culling particular letters, and stringing them on his lines; as he is sure that his verses are just measure, without scanning them on his fingers.

There are almost daily published certain Lilliputian volumes entitled pretty books for children. A friend of mine, who considers the little rhymers of the age as only " children of a larger growth," that amuse themselves with rhymes instead of rattles, proposes to publish a small pocket volume for the use of our poetasters. It will be a Treatise on the Art of Poetry adapted to the meanest capacities, for which subscriptions will be taken, and specimens may be seen, at George's and the Bedford coffee-houses. It will contain full directions how to modulate the numbers on every occasion, and will instruct the young scribbler in all the modern arts of versification. He will here meet with infallible rules how to soften a line, and lull us to sleep with liquids and diphthongs; to roughen the verse and make it roar again with reiteration of the letter R; to set it hissing with semi-vowels; to make it pant and breathe short with an hundred heavy aspirates; or clog it up with the thickest double consonants and monosyllables: with a particular table of alliteration, containing the choicest epithets, disposed into alphabetical order; so that any substantive may be readily paired with a word beginning with the same letter, which, (though a mere expletive) shall seem to carry more force and sentiment in it, than any other of a more relative meaning, but more distant sound. The whole to be illustrated with examples from the modern poets. This elaborate work. will be published about the middle of the winter, under the title of the Rhymer's Play-thing, or Poetaster's Horn-book; since there is nothing necessary to form such a poet, except teaching him his letters.

T

F2

No. LXXXIV. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4.

.........Tu, dum tua navis in alto est.

Hoc age.............

HOR.

Think, sailors, think, though landmen are your hate,
Who likes a mere tarpaulin but his mate!

SIR,

Το Mr. Τοwn.

YOU obliged the world some time ago with a few reflections on the gentlemen of the army: at the present juncture, a word or two on our sea-officers would not be unseasonable. I do not mean, that you should presume to direct them how to behave in their several stations, but rather to remark on their conduct and conversation in private life, as far as they are influenced by their maritime-characters. There is a certain unfashionable dye, which their names often take from the salt water, that tinctures their whole behaviour on shore. If you could assist in blotting out these stains, and give a new colour to their conduct, you would add grace and politeness to their ordinary conversation, and would be of as much service to our naval commanders in this point, as he was to navigation in general, who first invented the compass.

As the conversation of those fair-weather foplings, many of whom may be met with in the three regiments of guards, is usually flat and insipid, that of our sea-officers is turbulent and boisterous, and as a trip to Paris has perhaps over-refined the coxcomb in red, a voyage round the globe frequently brutalizes the seaman, who comes home so rough and unpolished, that one would imagine he had not visited any nation in the world, except the savages, or the Hottentots. The many advantages he has received from having seen the customs and manners of so many different people, it is natural to suppose, would render his conversation very desirable, as being in itself particularly instructive and entertaining; but this roughness, which clings to the seaman's behaviour, like tar to his trowsers, makes him unfit for all civil and polite society. He behaves at an assembly as if he was upon deck: and his whole deportment manifestly betrays, that he is according to the common phrase, quite out of his element. Nor can you collect any more from him concerning the several nations he has visited, than if he had been during the whole time confined to his cabin: and he seems to know as little of them as the fine gentleman of his travels after the polite tour, when he has for the sake of improvement, rid post through all Europe.

That our ordinary seamen, who are many of them draughted from the very lowest of the populace, should be thus uncivilized, is no wonder. The common sailor's education in Tottenham Court, or at Hockley in the Hole, has not qualified him to improve by just reflections on what he sees during his voyage; and going on board a man of war is a kind of university education, suitably adapted to the principles imbibed in the polite seminaries which he came from. A common sailor too is full as polite as a common soldier; and behaves as genteelly to a Wapping landlady, as the gentleman soldier at a suttling-house. But surely there ought to be as much difference in the behaviour of the commander and his crew, as there is in their situation: and it is beneath the dignity of the British flag to have an admiral behave as rudely as a swabber, or a commodore as foul-mouthed as a boatswain.

It may perhaps be alledged in excuse, that the being placed among such a set of boisterous people as