To the Memory of WILLIAM SHENSTONE, Efq.

OME, fhepherds, we'll follow the hearfe,

COM

And fee our lov'd CORY DON laid:

Tho' forrow may blemish the verse,
Yet let the fad tribute be paid.
They call'd him the pride of the plain :
In footh, he was gentle and kind;
He mark'd in his elegant ftrain,

The graces that glow'd in his mind.

On purpose he planted yon trees,

That birds in the covert might dwell;
He cultur'd the thyme for the bees,
But never would rifle their cell.
Ye lambkins that play'd at his feet,

Go bleat, and your mafter bemoan :
His mufic was artlefs and fweet,

His manners as mild as your own.

No verdure fhall cover the vale,

No bloom on the blossoms appear ;
The sweets of the foreft fhall fail,
And winter difcolour the year.
No birds in our hedges shall fing,
(Our hedges fo vocal before)

Since he that should welcome the spring,
Can greet the gay feafon no more.

His PHYLLIS was fond of his praise,
And poets came round in a throng;
They liften'd, and envy'd his lays,
But which of them equall'd his fong?
Ye fhepherds, henceforward be mute,
For loft is the pastoral strain ;
So give me my CORYDON's flute,

And thus-let me break it in twain.

III.

ESS A Y

Ο Ν

PASSIONATE AND DESCRIPTIVE

SON G S.

HE poet's rapturous descriptions of

TH

beauty, with the expreffion of his warm fenfations and emotions, are the fubjects of this clafs of fong-writing.

Its models exift in the claffical remains

G4

of

of Lyric poetry, and all the praise the moderns can here expect, muft arise from imitating with fuccefs thefe examples of perfection.

THE fublime and beautiful of nature, were first combined with the elegance and refinement of art, by the Grecians: and this fuperiority in their poetry, and the other fine arts, entitled them to distinguish the reft of the world from themselves, as Barbarians. Their Roman conquerors, first by their arms, and then by their borrowed arts, obtained a fhare in the honourable exclufion. Among these people, even fimple nature was graceful, and ornament was elegant and magnificent." Glaring fplendor reigned in the East, and terrible fublimity in the North, but grace and dignity belonged to Greece and Rome alone. Fancy, in her wildest flights, could in them reftrain herfelf within the limits of

harmony

harmony and proportion. Even fuperftition here wore a graceful afpect. While the Deities of other nations were present to their minds in the horrid forms of cruel rage and gigantic deformity, they gave divinity to the fublime and beautiful conceptions of their poets and painters. These they embodied with suitable fymbols and attributes; and the enthusiastic votary worshipped the God of his own enraptured imagination. There is no circumftance in which the genius of these people shows itself more ftrongly than in the character of these fancy-formed divinities. Befides thofe particularly diftinguished by the title of the Graces, there were many whofe attributes expreffed the different fhades and variations of whatever is elegant and graceful. Their Venus was the abstract idea of all these united-fhe was grace and beauty itself, and parent of every thing latum et amabile-gladfome

and