though they might flatten an oration of Tully to a Roman reader, they have no such effect upon an English one. What I have here said, may perhaps give us the reason why Virgil, when he mentions the ancestors of three noble Roman families, turns Sergius, Memmius, and Cluentius, which might have degraded his verse too much, into Sergestus, Mnestheus, and Cloanthus, though the three first would have been as high and sonorous to us as the other.

But though the poets could make thus free with the proper names of persons, and in that respect enjoyed a privilege beyond the prose writers; they lay both under an equal obligation, as to the names of places: for there is no poetical geography, rivers are the same in prose and verse; and the towns and countries of a romance differ nothing from those of a true history. How oddly, therefore, must the name of a paltry village sound to those who were well acquainted with the meanness of the place; and yet how many such names are to be met with in the catalogues of Homer and Virgil? Many of their words must, therefore, very much shock the ear of a Roman or Greek, especially whilst the poem was new; and appear as meanly to their own countrymen, as the duke of Buckingham's Putney Pikes and Chelsea Curiaseers do to an Englishman. But these their catalogues have no such disadvantageous sounds in them to the ear of a modern, who scarce ever hears of the names out of the poet, or knows any thing of the places that belong to them. London may sound as well to a foreigner, as Troy or Rome; and Islington, perhaps, better than London to them who have no distinct ideas arising from the names. I have here only mentioned the names of men and places; but we may easily carry the observation further, to those of several plants, animals, &c. Thus, where Virgil compares the flight of Mercury to that of a water-fowl, Servius tells us, that he purposely omitted the word Mergus, that he might not debase his style with it; which, though it might have offended the niceness of a Roman ear, would have sounded

more tolerably in ours. Scaliger, indeed, ridicules the old scholiast for his note; because, as he observes, the word Mergus is used by the same poet in his Georgics. But the critic should have considered that, in the Georgics, Virgil studied description more than majesty; and therefore might justly admit a low word into that poem, which would have disgraced his Æneid, especially when a god was to be joined with it in the comparison.

As antiquity thus conceals what is low and vulgar in an author, so does it draw a kind of veil over any expression that is strained above nature, and recedes too much from the familiar forms of speech. A violent Grecism, that would startle a Roman at the reading of it, sounds more natural to us, and is less distinguishable from other parts of the style. An obsolete, or a new word, that made a strange appearance at first to the reader's eye, is now incorporated into the tongue, and grown of a piece with the rest of the language. And as for any bold expressions in a celebrated ancient, we are so far from disliking them, that most readers single out only such passages as are most daring, to commend; and take it for granted, that the style is beautiful and elegant, where they find it hard and unnatural. Thus has time mellowed the works of antiquity, by qualifying, if I may so say, the strength and rawness of their colours, and casting into shades the light that was at first too violent and glaring for the eye to behold with pleasure.

END OF THE SIXTH VOLUME.

INDEX

TO VOL. VI.

ABBE', a French one, his account of the population of Paris, 131.
Absalom and Achitophel, Dryden's poem, why more interesting now
than it will be to posterity, 444.

Act of parliament, for the encouragement of loyalty in Scotland,
a provision in it, 5. For making parliamentary elections less fre-
quent, 175.

Actions, proceeding from patriotism more illustrious than any others,

22.

Adam, his praise of the loveliness of Eve, as superior to his reason,'
156.

Addison, when and for what purpose he undertook the Freeholder, 3.
note. His humorous papers the best; those on grave and political
subjects the worst written, 98, note. His Highland-seer's vision had
been with more propriety given as a dream of his own, 119, note.
Solid reasoning in his paper on the punishment of the rebels, 153.
note. His panegyric on Pope's translation of the Iliad, where com-
mented on, 189, note. Speaks like a friend of Rowe and like a whig
of Lucan, 190, note. Makes a whig of Queen Elizabeth, 245, note. His
Freeholder preserved by the reputation of his other works, 250, note.
Closed his life like Pascal in meditating a defence of the Christian
Religion, 255, 256, note. Mr. Gibbon's satirical remark on it answer-
ed, 259, note. Encomiums on him by Sir R. Steele, 306. Why he
declined going into orders, 313. Remarks of his father on the
friendship between him and Steele, 315. His exquisite humour,
and delicate satire, 316. Conjecture respecting his Discourse on An-
cient and Modern Learning, 441, note. An expression in it by which
one might swear to the author, 447, note. Another instance of ex-
pression purely Addisonian, 454, note.

Administration, frequent changes in, a misfortune to this country,

112.

Ado Viennensis, apology of an Athenian philosopher for the Christian
religion extant in his time, 268.

Adrian the emperor, skilled in magic, 265.

Ælian, speaks of fools who sacrificed an ox to a fly, 155.

Æsop, his fable of the viper, recommended to female malecontents,
118.