SONG.

} THE SENTIMENTS BORROWED FROM SHAKESPEARE.

YOUNG Damon of the vale is dead,

Ye lowland hamlets, moan:

A dewy turf lies o'er his head,

And at his feet a stone.

Fiis shroud, which Death's cold damps destroy, Of snow-white threads was made:

All mourn'd to see so sweet a boy

In earth for ever laid.

Pale pansies o'er his corpse were plac'd,
Which, pluck'd before their time,
Bestrew'd the boy, like him to waste
And wither in their prime.

But will he ne'er return, whose tongue
Could tune the rural lay?

Ah, no! his bell of peace is rung,
His lips are cold as clay.

They bore him out at twilight hour,
The youth who lov'd so well:

Ah me! how many a true-love shower
Of kind remembrance fell!

Each maid was woe-but Lucy chief,
Her grief o'er all was tried;

Within his grave she dropp'd in grief,
And o'er her lov'd-one died.

OBSERVATIONS

ON THE

ORIENTAL ECLOGUES.

THE genius of the pastoral, as well as of every other respectable species of poetry, had its origin in the East, and from thence was transplanted by the Muses of Greece; but whether from the continent of the lesser Asia, or from Egypt, which, about the era of the Grecian pastoral, was the hospitable nurse of letters, it is not easy to determine. From the subjects, and the manner, of Theocritus, one would incline to the latter opinion, while the history of Bion is in favour of the former.

However, though it should still remain a doubt, through what channel the pastoral travelled westward, there is not the least shadow of uncertainty Concerning its oriental origin.

In those ages, which, guided by sacred chronology, from a comparative view of time, we call the early ages, it appears from the most authentic historians, that the chiefs of the people employed themselves in rural exercises, and that astronomers and legislators were at the same time shepherds. Thus Strabo informs us, that the history of the creation was communicated to the Egyptians by a Chaldean shepherd.

From these circumstances it is evident, not only that such shepherds were capable of all the dignity and elegance peculiar to poetry, but that whatever poetry they attempted would be of the pastoral kind; would take its subjects from those scenes of rural simplicity in which they were conversant, and, as it was the offspring of Harmony and Nature,

would employ the powers it derived from the former to celebrate the beauty and benevolence of the latter.

Accordingly we find that the most ancient poems treat of agriculture, astronomy, and other objects within the rural and natural systems.

What constitutes the difference between the georgic and the pastoral, is love and the colloquial or dramatic form of composition peculiar to the latter: this form of composition is sometimes dispensed with, and love and rural imagery alone are thought sufficient to distinguish the pastoral. The tender passion, however, seems to be essential to this species of poetry, and is hardly ever excluded from those pieces that were intended to come under this denomination: even in those eclogues of the Amæbean kind, whose only purport is a trial of skill between contending shepherds, love has its usual share, and the praises of their respective mistresses are the general subjects of the competitors.

It is to be lamented that scarce any oriental compositions of this kind have survived the ravages of ignorance, tyranny, and time; we cannot doubt that many such have been extant, possibly as far down as that fatal period, never to be mentioned in the world of letters without horrour, when the glorious monuments of human ingenuity perished in the ashes of the Alexandrian library.

Those ingenious Greeks whom we call the parents of pastoral poetry were, probably, no more than imitators, that derived their harmony from higher and remoter sources, and kindled their poetical fires at those then unextinguished lamps which burned within the tombs of oriental genius.

It is evident that Homer has availed himself of those magnificent images and descriptions so frequently to be met with in the books of the Old Testament; and why may not Theocritus, Moschus, and Bion, have found their archetypes in other eastern writers, whose names have perished with their works? Yet, though it may not be illiberal to admit such a supposition, it would certainly be invidious to conclude, what the malignity of cavillers alone could suggest with regard to Homer, that they destroyed the sources from which they borrowed, and, as it is fabled of the young of the pelican, drained their supporters to death.

As the Septuagint-translation of the Old Testament was performed at the request, and under the patronage, of Ptolemy Philadelphus, it were not to be wondered if Theocritus, who was entertained at that prince's court, had borrowed some of his pastoral imagery from the poetical passages of those books. I think it can hardly be doubted that the Sicilian poet had in his eye certain expressions of the prophet Isaiah, when he wrote the following lines:

Νυν τα μεν φορεοιτε βατοι, φορεοιτε δ' ακανθαι,
Α δε καλα Νάρκισσος επ' αρκευθοισι κομάσαι·
Παντα δ' ενάλλα γενοιτο, και & πιτυς οχνας ενείκαι,
και τας κύνας άλαφος έλκοι.

Let vexing brambles the blue violet bear,
On the rude thorn Narcissus dress his hair-
All, all revers'd-The pine with pears be crown'd,
And the bold deer shall drag the trembling hound.

The cause, indeed, of these phenomena is very different in the Greek from what it is in the Hebrew poet; the former employing them on the death,

VOL. XII

the latter on the birth, of an important person: but the marks of imitation are nevertheless obvious.

It might, however, be expected, that if Theocritus had borrowed at all from the sacred writers, the celebrated epithalamium of Solomon, so much within his own walk of poetry, would not certainly have escaped his notice. His epithalamium on the marriage of Helena, moreover, gave him an open field for imitation; therefore, if he has any obligations to the royal bard, we may expect to find them there. The very opening of the poem is in the spirit of the Hebrew song:

Ουτω δη πρωΐζα κατέδραθες, ο φιλε γαμβρε; The colour of imitation is still stronger in the following passage:

Αως αντέλλοισα καλον διέφαμε πρόσωπον,

· Ποτκα τυξ άτε, λευκον εαρ χειμώνος ανεκτός, Ωδέ και ο χρυσία Έλενα διέφαίνετ' εν άμιν, Πιειρη, μεγάλη. άτ' ανέδραμεν ογμος αρουρα, Η καπῳ κυπαρισσος, η άρματι Θεσσαλος ἱππος. This description of Helen is infinitely above the style and figure of the Sicilian pastoral-" She is like the rising of the golden morning, when the night departeth, and when the winter is over and gone. She resembleth the cypress in the garden, the horse in the chariots of Thessaly." These figures plainly declare their origin; and others, equally imitative, might be pointed out in the same Idyllium.

This beautiful and luxuriant marriage pastoral of Solomon is the only perfect form of the oriental eclogue that has survived the ruins of time, a happiness for which it is, probably, more indebted to its sacred character than to its intrinsic merit. Not that it is by any means destitute of poetical excellence: like all the eastern poetry, it is bold, wild, and unconnected in its figures, allusions, and parts, and has all that graceful and magnificent daring which characterizes its metaphorical and comparative imagery.

In consequence of these peculiarities, so ill adapted to the frigid genius of the North, Mr. Collins could make but little use of it as a precedent for his oriental eclogues; and even in his third eclogue, where the subject is of a similar nature, he has chosen rather to follow the mode of the Doric and the Latin pastoral.

The scenery and subjects then of the following eclogues alone are oriental; the style and colouring are purely European; and, for this reason, the author's preface, in which he intimates that he had the originals from a merchant who traded to the East, is omitted, as being now altogether superfluous.

With regard to the merit of these eclogues, it may justly be asserted, that in simplicity of description and expression, in delicacy and softness of numbers, and in natural and unaffected tenderness, they are not to be equalled by any thing of the pastoral kind in the English language.

ECLOGUE L

THIS eclogue, which is entitled Selim, or The Shepherd's Moral, as there is nothing dramatic in the subject, may be thought the least entertaining

of the four: but it is by no means the least vat luable. The moral precepts which the intelligen shepherd delivers to his fellow-swains and the virgins, their companions, are such as would infallibly promote the happiness of the pastoral life.

In impersonating the private virtues, the poet has observed great propriety, and has formed their genealogy with the most perfect judgment, when he represents them as the daughters of Truth and Wisdom.

The characteristics of Modesty and Chastity are extremely happy and peinturesque :

"Come thou, whose thoughts as limpid springs are clear,

To lead the train, sweet Modesty, appear: With thee be Chastity, of all afraid, Distrusting all, a wise, suspicious maid; Cold is her breast, like flowers that drink the dew, A silken veil conceals her from the view." The two similes borrowed from rural objects are not only much in character, but perfectly natural and expressive. There is, notwithstanding, this defect in the former, that it wants a peculiar propriety; for purity of thought may as well be applied to Chastity as to Modesty; and from this instance, as well as from a thousand more, we may see the necessity of distinguishing, in characteristic poetry, every object by marks and attributes peculiarly its own.

It cannot be objected to this eclogue, that it wants both those essential criteria of the pastoral, love and the drama; for though it partakes not of the latter, the former still retains an interest in it, and that too very material, as it professedly consults the virtue and happiness of the lover, while it informs what are the qualities

-that must lead to love.

ECLOGUE II.

ALL the advantages that any species of poetry can derive from the novelty of the subject and The route of a scenery, this eclogue possesses. camel-driver is a scene that scarce could exist in the imagination of an European, and of its attendant distresses he could have no idea.-These are very happily and minutely painted by our descriptive poet. What sublime simplicity of expression! what nervous plainness in the opening of the poem!

"In silent horrour o'er the boundless waste The driver Hassan with his camels pass'd." The magic pencil of the poet brings the whole scene before us at once, as it were by enchantment, and in this single complet we feel all the effect that arises from the terrible wildness of a region unenlivened by the habitations of men. The verses, that describe so minutely the camel-driver's little provisions, have a touching influence on the imagination, and prepare the reader to enter more feelingly into his future apprehensions of distress:

Bethink thee, Hassan, where shall thirst assuage, When fails this cruse, his unrelenting rage !" It is difficult to say whether his apostrophe to the mute companions of his toils, is more to be adinired for the elegance and beauty of the poetical imagery, or for the tenderness and humanity of

from nature, and the thoughts, however obvious, or destitute of refinement, are perfectly in character. But, as the closest pursuit of nature is the surest way to excellence in general, and to sublimity in particular, in poetical description, so we find that this simple suggestion of the shepherd is not unattended with magnificence. There is grandeur and variety in the landscape he describes:

"And first review that long-extended plain, And yon wide groves, already pass'd with pain! Yon ragged cliff, whose dangerous path we try'd! And last this lofty mountain's weary side!" There is, in imitative harmony, an act of expressing a slow and difficult movement by adding to the usual number of pauses in a verse. This is observable in the line that describes the ascent of the

mountain:

And last this lofty mountain's | weary side . Here we find the number of pauses, or musical bars, which, in a heroic verse, is commonly two, in

creased to three.

The liquid melody, and the numerous sweetness of expression in the following descriptive lines is almost inimitably beautiful:

"Sweet to the sight is Zabran's flowery plain, And once by nymphs and shepherds lov'd in vain! No more the virgins shall delight to rove By Sargis' banks, or Irwan's shady grove; On Tarkie's mountain catch the cooling gale, Or breathe the sweets of Aly's flowery vale." Nevertheless in this delightful landscape there is an obvious fault: there is no distinction between the plain of Zabran, and the vale of Aly: they are both flowery, and consequently undiversified. This could not proceed from the poet's want of judgment, but from inattention: it had not occurred to him that he had employed the epithet flowery twice within so short a compass; an oversight which those who are accustomed to poetical, or, indeed, to any other species of composition, know to be very possible.

Nothing can be more beautifully conceived, or more pathetically expressed, than the shepherd's apprehensions for his fair country-women, exposed to the ravages of the invaders.

"In vain Circassia boasts her spicy groves, For ever fam'd for pure and happy loves: In vain she boasts her fairest of the fair, Their eyes' blue languish, and their golden hair! Those eyes in tears their fruitless grief shall send; Those hairs the Tartar's cruel hand shall rend." There is, certainly, some very powerful charm in the liquid melody of sounds. The editor of these poems could never read or hear the following verse repeated, without a degree of pleasure otherwise entirely unaccountable:

“Their eyes' blue languish, and their golden hair." Such are the Oriental Eclogues, which we leave with the same kind of anxious pleasure, we feel upon a temporary parting with a beloved friend.

OBSERVATIONS

ON

THE ODES,

DESCRIPTIVE AND ALLEGORICAL

The genius of Collins was capable of every degree of excellence in lyric poetry, and perfectly qualified for that high province of the Muse. Possessed of a native ear for all the varieties of harmony and modulation, susceptible of the finest feelings of tenderness and humanity, but above all, carried imagination its strongest colouring, he was, at away by that high enthusiasm, which gives to lody of his numbers, of influencing the passions by once, capable of soothing the ear with the methe force of his pathos, and of gratifying the fancy by the luxury of his description.

In consequence of these powers, but more particularly in consideration of the last, he chose such subjects for his lyric essays as were most favourable for the indulgence of description and allegory; where he could exercise his powers in moral and personal painting; where he could exert his invention in conferring attributes on images or objects already known, and described, by a determinate number of characteristics; where he might give an uncommon eclat to his figures, by placing them in happier attitudes, or in more advantageous lights, and introduce new forms from the moral and intellectual world into the society of impersonated beings.

Such, no doubt, were the privileges which the poet expected, and such were the advantages he derived from the descriptive and allegorical nature of his themes.

It seems to have been the whole industry of our author (and it is, at the same time, almost all the claim to moral excellence his writings can boast) to promote the influence of the social virtues, by painting them in the fairest and happiest lights.

Melior fieri tuendo,

would be no improper motto to his poems in general, but of his lyric poems it seems to be the whole moral tendency and effect. If, therefore, it should appear to some readers that he has been more industrious to cultivate description than sentiment; it may be observed, that his descriptions themselves are sentimental, and answer the whole end of that species of writing, by embellishing every feature of virtue, and by conveying, through the effects of the pencil, the finest moral lessons to the mind.

Horace speaks of the fidelity of the ear in preference to the uncertainty of the eye; but if the mind receives conviction, it is certainly of very little importance through what medium, or by sions left on the imagination may, possibly, be which of the senses, it is conveyed. The impresthought less durable than the deposits of memory, but it may very well admit of a question, whether a conclusion of reason, or an impression of imagination, will soonest make its way to the heart. A moral precept, conveyed in words, is only an account of truth in its effects; a moral picture is truth exemplified; and which is most likely to gain upon the affections, it may not be difficult to determine.