¥800.] Concerning Hexameters, and Klop/tack’s Meffiah. 
perfevered, and the nation is converted. 
Why fhould not his future tranflator anti- 
Cipate a fimilar fuccefs ? 
It may be doubted however if the moft 
fortunate englifher of Klopitock would 
obtain that national popularity and grati- 
tude, that recognition of his work as a 
perpetual claffic, which Mickle, beyond 
our other-epic tranflators, feems to have 
attained. Klopfock’s Mefhah, why 
fhould it not be owned? will appear dall 
in Englith ; becaufe it is really fo in Ger- 
man. The plan was not firuck out at 2 
fongle effort ; it is all piece-meal foldering, 
inftead of being melted in one caft. It 
wants diftin&tnefs, proportion, cohefion. 
‘The fable is confequently deficient in in- 
@reft. Where there is no wholenefs, there 
can be no care for the one great end. Nor 
does all the topical application of the poet 
overcome this conftitutional imperfeétion 
of his work. The crucifixion and the 
refurrection ought to have been the focufes 
of expectation, the centres of attraGtion 
along the whole orbit of his cometary 
courte; they are loft fight of in favor of a 
galaxy of minute anecdotes, and a zodiac 
of mythological apparitions. What the 
action wants of extent as to time, the poet 
has endeavoured to fupply by extent as to 
f{pace, and beckons fpectators from every 
cranny of the univerfe. He feems aloof 
and adrift in a crowded atmofphere of {pi- 
rits and angels, where every little groupe 
is gibbering, and occafionally veers to look 
at the execution that is going on: but his 
mortal aftonifhment, inftead of {electing 
the mightier bufinefs for record, thinks 
every character in the throng worth de- 
{cribing, and gets bewildered in the infi- 
nitude of his tafk. No epopcea exifts, out 
of which fo many pafleges and perfonages 
could be cut wihout mutilation. Dif- 
tracted by the multiplicity of fubordinate 
objects, the curiofity excited concerning 
each is inconfiderable. That headlong 
participation in thé purfuits of the heroes, 
which bawls aloud along with Heétor for 
fire, iso where felt in the Mefhah. Every 
fecondary incident fhould have found a 
place only in as much as it tended to ad- 
vance or retard, or influence, the grand ca- 
taftrcophe. An anxiety about the chief 
bufinefs of the poem might thus have been 
infpired. Now, the parts withdraw at- 
tention from the whole: one fees nat the 
foreft for the trees. Inftead of bearing 
down on the point for which he is bound, 
and failing with full canvas toward his 
main deftination, Klopftock is continually 
laveering: beautiful or fublime as the 
iflands and rocks may be which he thus 
mation to travel to the end. 
319 
brings into view, they indemnify not for 
his torgetting the voyage. One as wil- 
lingly begins with the fecond book as 
with the firft: one as willingly {tops after 
the eighth canto as after the tenth. The 
thoufand and one epifodes of the fecond 
half of the poem have inturrupted many a 
reader, and one traflator, in his determi- 
The multi- 
plicity of the pietifical rhapfodies would 
weary even Saint Therefa. 
Another fault, or misfortuce, of Klop- 
ftock, is his hyperorthodoxy. Thofe doc- 
trines of the theolopilts, which wander 
fartheft from common and natural fenfe, 
are precifely the ideas which he molt da 
lights to embody, and officioufly to pre-. 
fent in all the palpability of his poe ic 
{culpture. The identity of different per- 
fons of the godhead, the pri-ex:ftence of 
the unborn, the migrations of Omnipre- 
fence are fearcely marv-llous enough for 
his tranfub#antiating fancy. His very 
luxury confifts in 
Explaining how perfection fuffer’d pain 
Almighty lanzuifh’d, and Eternal dy’d3 . 
How by his victor-viétim Death was dain, 
And earth profan’d, yetbleft, with Deicide. 
@ that the hallow’d waters of Phiala* had 
been handed by Ceva, or Socini, to the 
poet! By endeavouring to fublimate his 
Je‘us into a Jehova, he inhumanizes the 
moft lovely of charaéters, and greatly lef- 
fens the fympathy, the perfooal attach- 
ment, the impaflioned adherence, which a 
being more like ourfelves might have in- 
fpired. The God-man, as Klopftock calls 
him, is by all his godthip, in point of pity, 
a lofer ; the temptation, the agony, the cru- 
cifixion, are no burdens for the fhoulders 
of Ompipotence: the refurrection—no 
miracle, no triumph, norecompenle. The 
attempt to elevate other characters into fit 
companions for the Omnifcient produces on 
all the Difciples a fimilar difinterefting ef- 
fect : {crewed up above the pitch of hu. 
man nature, they infenfibly become aliens 
to our regard. They act and {peak ra- 
ther as the puppets of cherubim and fer7e 
phim, than as living feeling irritable fons 
ofclay. The author of the Odyfley would 
have attempted no fuch hyperbolical ideas 

* Ought the reader to be informed that 
Phiala, the fource of the Jordan, is, in Klop- 
ftock, the Helicon of facred fong; and that 
Ceva (author of Fefus Puer) has treated the 
mythological, and Socini, the human perfon- 
ages, of the Chrittianfyitem, with lels myitis 
cifm than any other writers within the pale of 
faith 2 
izations, 
