etzia is delivered of her child, as exquisitely
beautiful.[234]

[234] Oberon, Canto viii. stanzas 69-80. The little touch about the new
born babe's returning its mother's kiss is very romantic: though put
modestly in the form of a query:

--Und scheint nicht jeden Kuss
Sein kleiner mund dem ihren zu entsaugen?

The word _entsaugen (suck off)_ is expressive--it very naturally
characterises the kiss of an infant five minutes of age. Wieland had
great nursery experience. 'My sweetest hours,' says he, in a letter
quoted in the Survey,' are those in which I see about me, in all their
glee of childhood, my whole posse of little half-way things between apes
and angels.'

Mr. Sotheby's translation of the Oberon made the poem popular in this
country. The original first appeared in 1780. S. C.

I said that I did not perceive any very striking passages; but that I
made allowance for the imperfections of a translation. Of the thefts of
Wieland, he said, they were so exquisitely managed, that the greatest
writers might be proud to steal as he did. He considered the books and
fables of old romance writers in the light of the ancient mythology, as
a sort of common property, from which a man was free to take whatever he
could make a good use of. An Englishman had presented him with the odes
of Collins, which he had read with pleasure. He knew little or nothing
of Gray, except his ELEGY written in a country CHURCH-YARD. He
complained of the fool in LEAR. I observed that he seemed to give a
terrible wildness to the distress; but still he complained. He asked
whether it was not allowed, that Pope had written rhymed poetry with
more skill than any of our writers--I said I preferred Dryden, because
his couplets had greater variety in their movement. He thought my reason
a good one; but asked whether the rhyme of Pope were not more exact.
This question I understood as applying to the final terminations, and
observed to him that I believed it was the case; but that I thought it
was easy to excuse some inaccuracy in the final sounds, if the general
sweep of the verse was superiour. I told him that we were not so exact
with regard to the final endings of lines as the French. He did not seem
to know that we made no distinction between masculine and feminine (i.e.
single or double,) rhymes: at least he put inquiries to me on this
subject. He seemed to think, that no language could be so far formed as
that it might not be