224] A TOPOGRAPHICAL 



never receive from his poetry. The event was more propitious 

 than was foretold by the critic, for the profits arising from the tra- 

 gedy amounted to nearly one thousand pounds, which enabled the 

 poet to pay some debts which he contracted during his attendance 

 at Court. 



It would be superfluous to review a tragedy which is no longer 

 represented ; Mariamne has several beauties as a poem, but there 

 is a degree of uniformity in the construction of the verse which 

 tires by its stiffness, and is unlike that familiarity of dialogue and 

 redundancy of measure, so happily adopted by Shakspeare and 

 Otway. 



About this time Fenton translated the eleventh book of Homer's 

 Odyssey into English blank verse, and as Pope had now com- 

 pleted his justly-celebrated translation of the Iliad, and engaged to 

 translate the Odyssey, he employed our poet, and Mr. Broome, as 

 his coadjutors in the work. The books allotted to Fenton were the 

 first, fourth, nineteenth, and twentieth, and he performed his task 

 .to the entire satisfaction of his friend and employer, and all the 

 admirers of English poetry. Some critics have observed in ap- 

 probation of the abilities of Fenton and Broome respecting this 

 masterly translation, that the books translated by them are not in- 

 ferior to nor distinguishable from those of Pope ; but there can be 

 no doubt that a poet who was so elegant and exact as the sweet 

 bard of Twickenham, carefully corrected the productions of his 

 associates, as well as his own, before they were committed to the 

 hands of the printer. From the specimen given by Dr. Johnson 

 in his admirable life of Pope, of the care and exactitude of that 

 great poet in his corrections of the translation of the Iliad, he was 

 undoubtedly as careful to maintain his merited reputation undimi- 

 nished in his subsequent version of Homer's inferior work. Hence 

 that regularity, harmony, and vigour, which pervades both the 

 translations, were derived from the masterly touches of the great 

 harmonist of the poetic lyre. 



It was indeed highly honourable to the genius of Fenton to be 

 considered a worthy consociate of Pope, and that he was a man of 

 elegant taste and considerable abilities as a critic, 'and an original 

 writer in prose as well as verse, was proved by a brief biography 

 of our greatest poet, Milton, which he prefixed to a new edition of 

 the Paradise Lost and other poems, the punctuation of which was 

 carefully corrected by our author. 



When Fenton had prepared his pupil, Mr. Trumbull, for anintro- 



