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 stooping with age, oppressed with wants, and conflicting with infirmities.  In this situation, it was no wonder that much of his vigour was lost; and we ought rather to admire the amazing force of genius, which was so little depressed under all these calamities, than industriously to dwell on his imperfections.

Mr. Spence in one of his chapters on Allegory, in his Polymetis, has endeavoured to shew, how very little our poets have understood the allegories of the antients, even in their translations of them; and has instanced Mr. Dryden’s translation of the Aeneid, as he thought him one of our most celebrated poets.  The mistakes are very numerous, and some of them unaccountably gross.  Upon this, says Mr. Warton, “I was desirous to examine Mr. Pitt’s translation of the same passages; and was surprized to find near fifty instances which Mr. Spence has given of Dryden’s mistakes of that kind, when Mr. Pitt had not fallen into above three or four.”  Mr. Warton then produces some instances, which we shall not here transcribe, as it will be more entertaining to our readers to have a few of the most shining passages compared, in which there is the highest room for rising to a blaze of poetry.