woman," who has loved a woman, and lost whom he loved, and lamented whom he has lost, that will not feel in the depth of his spirit all the tenderness and truth of these old-fashioned couplets? I dare not offer a comment upon them, lest I should disturb the sanctity of repose which they are calculated to inspire. Nature speaks all languages; and no style is too quaint or pedantic, in which she may not utter heart-sentiments in terms that cannot be misunderstood, or understood be resisted.

Gray is one of the few, the very few, of our greatest poets, who deserves to be studied in every line for the apprehension of that wonderful sweetness, power, and splendour of versification, which has made him (scholastic and difficult as he is) one of the most popular of writers, though his rhymes are occasionally flat, and his phrases heathen Greek to ordinary readers. The secret of his supremacy consists principally in the consummate art with which his diction is elaborated into the most melodious concatenation of syllables to form lines; and those lines so to implicate and evolve in progression, that the strain of one of Handel's Overtures is not more consecutively ordered to carry the mind onward, through every bar, to the march at the conclusion, when (as in the instance of the Occasional Oratorio) the hearer has been wrought to such a state of exaltation, that he feels as though he could mount the scaffold to the beaten time of such music.

"The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, and the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed."
GRAY'S Elegy.

This is one of the most striking stanzas in Gray's Elegy, which owes much of its celebrity to the concordance of numbers expressly tuned to the subjects, and felicity of language both in the sound and the significance of words employed. Yet in the first line of the verse above quoted, the far-sought elegance of characteristic description in "the breezy call of incense-breathing morn" is spoiled utterly by the disagreeable clash between "breezy" and "breathing," within a few syllables of each other. Contrast this with the corresponding line, and the dullest ear will distinguish the clear, full harmony of

"The cock's shrill clarion, and the echoing horn,"

from the asthmatical wheezing of the breeze and the breathing of the incense. This has been mentioned, not for the sake of petty criticism, but to render more emphatical the stress which I lay upon the pre-eminence of this author in the management of Englishrhythm.

"Oh, lyre divine! what daring spirit
Wakes thee now? though he inherit
Not the pride, nor ample pinion,
Which the Theban eagle bear,
Sailing with supreme dominion
Through the azure deep of air."

Progress of Poesy

Where can measures more noble than the fore

going be found in any modern tongue?

"Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While, proudly riding o'er the azure realm,
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes,

Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm ;
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,

That, hush'd in grim repose, expects his evening prey." The Bard.

It would be idle to descant on the diction or imagery of verses like these. I will only advert to the prophetic intimation of the catastrophe in the last clause. Had the poet described the tempest itself with the power of Virgil in the first book of his Æneid, it would have failed, in this instance, to produce the effect of sublime and ineffable horror, of which a glimpse appears in the background, while the gallant vessel is sailing with wind, and tide, and sunshine, on a sea of glory. All the sweeping fury of the whirlwind, awake and ravening over "his evening prey,” would have been less terrible than his “grim repose;" and the shrieks and struggles of drowning mariners less affecting than the sight of

"Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm,”

"regardless" of the inevitable doom on which they were already verging.

Dryden's "Alexander's Feast" is undoubtedly the lyric masterpiece of English poetry, in respect to versification; exemplifying, as it does, all the capabilities of our language in the use of iambics, trochees,

anapæsts, dactyls, and spondees. The metres in this composition are so varying, and yet so consonant; so harmonious, and so contrasted; they implicate and disentangle again so naturally, so necessarily almost, that I know not to what they can better be compared than to a group of young lions at play;-meeting, mingling, separating; pursuing, attacking, repelling; changing attitude, action, motion, every instant; all fire, force, and flexibility; exuberant in spirits, yet wasting none;-while the poet, like their sire couched and looking on, may be presumed, with his eye, to have ruled every turn and crisis of their game. He sings, indeed, the triumph of Music,—but his poetry triumphs over his subject; and he insinuates as much. It was less "the breathing flute and sounding lyre" of Timotheus, than the living voice, the changing themes, the language of light and power of the bard, "that won the cause." A single section will justify this praise; the measures, it will be observed, change in every couplet; there are scarce two lines alike in accentuation; yet the whole seems as spontaneous as the cries of alarm and consternation excited by the bacchanal orgies described.

"Now strike the golden lyre again:

A louder yet, and yet a louder strain;

Break his bands of sleep asunder,

And rouse him like a rattling peal of thunder.
Hark! hark! the horrid sound

Has raised up his head,

As awaked from the dead,

And amazed he stares around.

Revenge! Revenge! Timotheus cries;

See the Furies arise:

See the snakes that they rear,

How they hiss in their air,

And the sparkles that flash from their eyes.
Behold a ghastly band,

Each a torch in his hand!

Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain,
And unburied remain,

Inglorious on the plain :

Give the vengeance due

To the valiant crew!

Behold how they toss their torches on high,
How they point to the Persian abodes,
And glittering temples of the hostile gods!
-The princes applaud with a furious joy,
And the king seized a flambeau, with zeal to destroy :
Thais led the way,

To light him to his prey,

And like another Helen fired another Troy."

Metrical Romances.

A free and easy species of verse, which may be called the Lyrical Narrative, has been very fashionable since the first splendid achievements of the great master in this style,-Sir Walter Scott, who founded it upon the models of his elder countrymen; rejecting their barbarisms, and blending with their better manner an abundant proportion of modern refinements. This innovation affects various forms in its rhythmical cadences, but its practitioners confine themselves to none altogether: here, skirmishing away in the mosstrooping measures of "The Last Minstrel;" there, marching in stanzas of a mile, with the stately tread of