What female heart can gold defpife?
What cat's averse to fish?

the first relates merely to

the nymph, and

The fixth stanza

the fecond only to the cat. contains a melancholy truth, that a favourite has no friend; but the last ends in a pointed fentence of no relation to the purpose; if what glistered had been gold, the cat would not have gone into the water; and, if she had, would not lefs have been drowned.

The Profpect of Eaton College suggests nothing to Gray, which every beholder does not equally think and feel. His fupplication to father Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop or toffes the ball, is useless and puerile. Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself. His epithet buxom health is not elegant; he feems not to understand the word. Gray thought his language more poetical as it was more remote from common use: finding in Dryden honey redolent of Spring, an expreffion that reaches the utmost limits of our language, Gray drove it a little more beyond common apprehen

fion, by making gales to be redolent of joy and youth.

Of the Ode on Adverfity, the hint was at first taken from 0 Diva, gratum quæ regis Antium; but Gray has excelled his original by the variety of his fentiments, and by their moral application. Of this piece, at once poetical and rational, I will not by flight objections violate the dignity.

My process has now brought me to the wonderful Wonder of Wonders, the two Sister Odes; by which, though either vulgar ignorance or common sense at first universally rejected them, many have been fince perfuaded to think themselves delighted. I am one of those that are willing to be pleased, and therefore would gladly find the meaning of the first stanza of the Progress of Poetry.

Gray seems in his rapture to confound the images of Spreading found and running water. A fream of mufick may be allowed; but where does Mufick, however smooth and firong, after having visited the verdant vales, rowl

down

down the steep amain, so as that rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar? If this be faid of Musick, it is nonsense; if it be faid of Water, it is nothing to the purpose.

The second stanza, exhibiting Mars's car and Jove's eagle, is unworthy of further notice. Criticifm difdains to chafe a fchoolboy to his common places.

To the third it may likewife be objected, that it is drawn from Mythology, though fuch as may be more eafily affimilated to real life. Idalia's velvet-green has fomething of cant. An epithet or metaphor drawn from Nature ennobles Art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from Art degrades Nature. Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily compounded. Many-twinkling was formerly cenfured as not analogical; we may fay many-spotted, but fcarcely many-spotting. This ftanza, however, has fomething pleafing.

Of the second ternary of stanzas, the first endeavours to tell fomething, and would have told it, had it not been croffed by Hyperion: the fecond defcribes well enough

the

the univerfal prevalence of Poetry; but I am afraid that the conclufion will not rise from the premises. The caverns of the North and the plains of Chili are not the refidences of Glory and generous Shame. But that Poetry and Virtue go always together is an opinion fo pleafing, that I can forgive him who refolves to think it true.

The third ftanza founds big with Delphi, and Egean, and Iliffus, and Meander, and hallowed fountain and folemn found; but in all Gray's odes there is a kind of cumbrous fplendor which we wish away. His pofition is at laft falfe: in the time of Dante and Petrarch, from whom he derives our first school of Poetry, Italy was over-run by tyrant power and coward vice; nor was our state much better when we firft borrowed the Italian arts.

Of the third ternary, the first gives a mythological birth of Shakspeare. What is faid of that mighty genius is true; but it is not faid happily: the real effects of this poetical power are put out of fight by the pomp of machinery. Where truth is fufficient to

fill the mind, fiction is worse than useless; the counterfeit debases the genuine.

His account of Milton's blindness, if we fuppofe it caused by study in the formation of his poem, a fuppofition furely allowable, is poetically true, and happily imagined. But the car of Dryden, with his two courfers, has nothing in it peculiar; it is a car in which any other rider may be placed.

The Bard appears, at the first view, to be, as Algarotti and others have remarked, an imitation of the prophecy of Nereus. Algarotti thinks it fuperior to its original; and, if preference depends only on the imagery and animation of the two poems, his judgement is right. There is in The Bard more force, more thought, and more variety. But to copy is less than to invent, and the copy has been unhappily produced at a wrong time. The fiction of Horace was to the Romans credible; but its revival difgufts us with apparent and unconquerable falfehood. Incredulus odi.

To select a fingular event, and swell it to a giant's bulk by fabulous appendages of VOL. IV.

I i

spectres