Oh how I love with thee to walk, And listen to thy whisper'd talk, Which innocence and truth imparts, And melts the most obdurate hearts. A thousand shapes you wear with ease, And still in every shape you please. Now wrapt in some mysterious dream, A lone philosopher you seem; Now quick from hill to vale you fly, And now you sweep the vaulted sky; A shepherd next, you haunt the plain, And warble forth your oaten strain. A lover now, with all the grace Of that sweet passion in your face; Then, calm'd to friendship, you assume The gentle-looking Hartford's bloom, As, with her Musidora, she (Her Musidora fond of thee) Amid the long withdrawing vale, Awakes the rivall'd nightingale. Thine is the balmy breath of morn, Just as the dew-bent rose is born; And while meridian fervours beat, Thine is the woodland dumb retreat; But chief, when evening scenes decay, And the faint landscape swims away, Thine is the doubtful soft decline, And that best hour of musing thine. Descending angels bless thy train, The virtues of the sage, and swain; Plain Innocence, in white array'd, Before thee lifts her fearless head: Religion's beams around thee shine, And cheer thy glooms with light divine: About thee sports sweet Liberty; And rapt Urania sings to thee. Oh, let me pierce thy secret cell! I just may cast my careless eyes TO THE REV. MR. MURDOCH, RECTOR OF STRADDISHALL, IN SUFFOLK, 1738. THUS safely low, my friend, thou canst not fall: Here reigns a deep tranquillity o'er all; No noise, no care, no vanity, no strife; Men, woods, and fields, all breathe untroubled life. Then keep each passion down, however dear; Trust me the tender are the most severe. Guard, while 'tis thine, thy philosophic ease, And ask no joy but that of virtuous peace; That bids defiance to the storms of Fate, High bliss is only for a higher state. AMBROSE PHILIPS. valued, sent to the same paper a comparison between his and those of Philips, in which he ironically gave the preference to the latter. The irony was not detected till it encountered the critical eye of Addison; and the consequence was, that it ruined the reputation of Philips as a composer of pastoral. AMBROSE MBROSE PHILIPS, a poet and miscellaneous writer, was born in 1671, claiming his descent from an ancient Leicestershire family. He received his education at St. John's College, Cambridge; and, attaching himself to the Whig party, he published, in 1700, an epitome of Hacket's life of Archbishop Williams, by which he obtained an introduction to Addison and Steele. Soon after, he made an at- When the accession of George I. brought the tempt in pastoral poetry, which, for a time, brought Whigs again into power, Philips was made a Westhim into celebrity. In 1709, being then at Copen-minster justice, and, soon after, a commissioner for hagen, he addressed to the Earl of Dorset some verses, descriptive of that capital, which are regarded as his best performance; and these, together with two translations from Sappho's writings, stand pre-eminent in his works of this class. In 1712 he made his appearance as a dramatic writer, in the tragedy of "The Distrest Mother," acted at Drury-lane with great applause, and still considered as a stock play. It cannot, indeed, claim the merit of originality, being closely copied from Racine's" Andromacque;" but it is well written, and skilfully adapted to the English stage. A storm now fell upon him relatively to his pastorals, owing to an exaggerated compliment from Tickell, who, in a paper of the Guardian, had made the true pastoral pipe descend in succession from Theocritus to Virgil, Spenser, and Philips. Pope, who found his own juvenile pastorals under the lottery. In 1718, he was the editor of a pe riodical paper, called "The Freethinker." In 1724, he accompanied to Ireland his friend Dr. Boulter, created archbishop of Armagh, to whom he acted as secretary. He afterwards represented the county of Armagh in parliament; and the places of secretary to the Lord Chancellor, and Judge of the Prerogative Court, were also conferred upon him. He returned to England in 1748, and died in the following year, at the age of seventy-eight. The verses which he composed, not only to young ladies in the nursery, but to Walpole when Minister of State, and which became known by the ludicrous appellation of namby-pamby, are easy and sprightly, but with a kind of infantile air, which fixed upon them the above name. TO THE EARL OF DORSET. FROM frozen climes, and endless tracts of snow, No gentle breathing breeze prepares the spring, The starving wolves along the main sea prowl, And yet but lately have I seen, ev'n here, The thick-sprung reeds, which watery marshes yield, The spreading oak, the beech, and towering pine, The crackling wood beneath the tempest bends, And journeys sad beneath the dropping trees: Like some deluded peasant, Merlin leads [meads: The birds, dismiss'd, (while you remain,) What phrenzy in my bosom rag'd, Though now he shuns thy longing arms, Though now he freeze, he soon shall burn, Celestial visitant, once more A HYMN TO VENUS, FROM THE GREEK OF SAPPHO. O VENUS, beauty of the skies, If ever thou hast kindly heard Thou once didst leave almighty Jove, A FRAGMENT OF SAPPHO. BLEST as the immortal gods is he, The youth who fondly sits by thee, And hears and sees thee all the while Softly speak, and sweetly smile. 'Twas this deprived my soul of rest, And rais'd such tumults in my breast; For while I gaz'd, in transport tost, My breath was gone, my voice was lost. My bosom glow'd; the subtle flame In dewy damps my limbs were chill'd, WILLIAM COLLINS. WILLIAM COLLINS, a distinguished modern poet, of disorder in his mind, perceptible to any but him self. He was reading the New Testament. " I have but one book," said he, "but it is the best." He was finally consigned to the care of his sister, in whose arms he finished his short and melancholy course, in the year 1756. was born at Chichester, in 1720 or 1721, where his father exercised the trade of a hatter. He received his education at Winchester College, whence he entered as a commoner of Queen's College, Oxford. In 1741, he procured his election into Magdalen college as a demy; and it was here that he wrote It is from his Odes, that Collins derives his chief his poetical" Epistle to Sir Thomas Hanmer, poetical fame; and in compensation for the neglect and his "Oriental Eclogues;" of both which with which they were treated at their first appearpieces the success was but moderate. In 1744, he ance, they are now almost universally regarded as came to London as a literary adventurer, and va- the first productions of the kind in our language rious were the projects which he formed in this with respect to vigour of conception, boldness and capacity. In 1746, however, he ventured to lay variety of personification, and genuine warmth of before the public a volume of " Odes, Descriptive feeling. They are well characterised in an essay and Allegorical;" but so callous was the national prefixed to his works in an ornamented edition pubtaste at this time, that their sale did not pay for the lished by Cadell and Davies, with which we shall printing. Collins, whose spirit was high, returned conclude this article. "He will be acknowledged to the bookseller his copy-money, burnt all the un- (says the author) to possess imagination, sweetness, sold copies, and as soon as it lay in his power, in- bold and figurative language. demnified him for his small loss; yet among these on the ear, and easily fix themselves in the memory. odes, were many pieces which now rank among the His vein of sentiment is by turns tender and lofty, finest lyric compositions in the language. After always tinged with a degree of melancholy, but not this mortification, he obtained from the booksellers possessing any claim to originality. His originality a small sum for an intended translation of Aristotle's consists in his manner, in the highly figurative garb Poetics, and paid a visit to an uncle, Lieutenant-in which he clothes abstract ideas, in the felicity of colonel Martin, then with the army in Germany. his expressions, and his skill in embodying ideal The Colonel dying soon after, left Collins a legacy creations. He had much of the mysticism of poetry, of 20001., a sum which raised him to temporary and sometimes became obscure by aiming at imopulence; but he now soon became incapable of pressions stronger than he had clear and well-defined every mental exertion. Dreadful depression of ideas to support. Had his life been prolonged, and spirits was an occasional attendant on his malady, with life had he enjoyed that ease which is necessary for which he had no remedy but the bottle. It was for the undisturbed exercise of the faculties, he about this time, that it was thought proper to con- would probably have risen far above most of his fine him in a receptacle of lunatics. Dr. Johnson contemporaries." paid him a visit at Islington, when there was nothing His numbers dwell I know thy hurried step, thy haggard eye! EPODE In earliest Greece, to thee, with partial choice, Yet he, the bard* who first invok'd thy name, But reach'd from Virtue's hand the patriot's steel. But who is he, whom later garlands grace, * Eschylus. Wrapt in thy cloudy veil th' incestuous queen †, Sigh'd the sad call her son and husband heard, When once alone it broke the silent scene, And he the wretch of Thebes no more appear'd. O Fear! I know thee by my throbbing heart, ANTISTROPHE. Thou who such weary lengths hast past, Where wilt thou rest, mad nymph, at last? Say, wilt thou shroud in haunted cell, Where gloomy Rape and Murder dwell? Or in some hollow'd seat, 'Gainst which the big waves beat, Hear drowning seamen's cries in tempests brought! Dark power, with shuddering meek submitted thought, Be mine, to read the visions old, And, lest thou meet my blasted view, Teach me but once like him to feel: ODE. WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1746. How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, By all their country's wishes blest! When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, Returns to deck their hallow'd mould, She there shall dress a sweeter sod, Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. By Fairy hands their knell is rung, + Jocasta. Kk 4 |