the lucky corrections and illustrations of one commentator appear improbable and absurd to the more sagacious eyes of another. Under these considerations, I hope the mistakes I may have committed in departing from the sentiments of a learned and ingenious critic, will be received with candour and indulgence.

B. i. c. i. s. xliii.

A fit false dream that can delude the sleepers'

sent.

Mr. Upton proposes to read sleepers shent, i. e. sleepers ill-treated or abused. But I rather think, that we should preserve the common reading, sent, which is the proper and original spelling of scent. Sent, says Skinner, which we falsely write scent, is derived

* None of Mr. Upton's criticisms on our author, but such as occur in his Letter to G. West, &c. and Observations on Shakespeare, are here considered.

a sentiendo*. Thus the meaning of this verse is, "A false dream that could deceive or impose upon the sleeper's perception," So that sent, if we consider its radix, sentio, is here plainly made to signify perception in general. Scent is often thus spelt in our

Scent is often thus written by Milton, in the genuine editions; and, as Dr. Newton observes, with great propriety.

* Thus E. K. in the Epistle prefixed to our author's Pastorals. "So Marot, Sanazzari, and also diverse other excellent both Italian and French poets, whose footing this author every where followeth : yet so as few, but they be well sented, can follow him."

The season prime for sweetest sents and airs *.

I confess that sent is somewhat harsh in this sense but what will not rhyme oblige the poet to say?

B. i. c. ii. s. xix.

And at his haughtie helmet making mark,
So hugely strooke, that it the steele did rive,
And rent his head; he tumbling downe alive,
With bloody mouth his mother earth did kiss,
Greeting his grave; his grudging ghost did strive
With the fraile flesh; at last it flitted is,
Whither the soules, &c. .

Mr. Upton would alter alive, in the third

* Paradise Lost, ix. 200..

+ Ibid. ix. 587.

Ibid. x. 267.

S Ibid. x. 277.

verse, to bilive, i. e. immediately: for, says he, did he tumble down alive after his head was cleft asunder*? Without entering into an anatomical disquisition concerning the possibility of living after such a blow; we may remark, that the poet himself intimates o us, that he fell down alive, and did not die till after his fall, in these lines,

His grudging ghost did strive

With the fraile flesh; at last it flitted is.

The same commentator would enforce and confirm the justness of this correction, by remarking, that the poet, in these verses, copied from Virgil,

Procubuit moriens, et kumum semel ore momordit.

* Such a question reminds one of Burmannus's note on the gemitu of the dying Turnus, in the last verse of the Æneid. "Illustrat hunc gemitum R. Titius; et de illo sono, et rauco murmure quod ex occlusa vocali arteria editur, explicat."

Where the word moriens doth not imply, that the man who fell down was dead. I must 'confess, that alive is superfluous; but Spen ́ser has run into many other superfluities, on account of his repetition of the same rhyme. Mr. Upton proposes likewise to write Earth [his mother Earth] with an initial capital, supposing it a Person; however, we had, perhaps, better suppose it a Thing: for if we understand it to be a Person, what an absurd mixture arises?

His mother Earth did kiss,

Greeting his grave.

Grave cannot be referred to Earth as a Person, but very properly to Earth as a Thing. However, it must be confessed that this is such an absurd mixture as Spenser was very likely to have fallen into; and we have numberless instances of this fault, in his account of the rivers which attended the marriage of Thames and Medway, 4. 11.