amidst enchantments, ghofts, goblins; every element supposed the residence of a kind of deity; the Genius of the mountain, the Spirit of the floods, the Oak endued with facred prophecy, made men walk abroad with a fearful apprehenfion

Of powers unseen, and mightier far than they. On the mountains, and in the woods, ftalked the angry Spectre; and in the gayeft and most pleasing scenes, even within the cheerful haunts of men, amongst villages and farms,

Tripp'd the light fairies and the dapper elves.

The reader will eafily perceive what refources remained for the Poet, in this vifionary land of ideal forms. The general scenery of nature, considered as inanimate, only adorns the descriptive part of poetry; but being, according to the Celtic traditions, animated by a kind of Intelligences, the bard could better make ufe of them, for his moral purposes. That awe of the immediate prefence of the Deity, which, among the vulgar of other nations, is confined to temples and altars, was here diffufed over every

object. The Celt paffed trembling through the woods, and over the mountain, and near the lakes, inhabited by these invisible powers; fuch apprehenfions must indeed

Deepen the murmur of the falling floods,

And fhed a browner horror on the woods;

give fearful accents to every whisper of the animate or inanimate creation, and arm every fhadow with terrors.

With great reason, therefore, it has been afferted, that the western bards had an advantage over Homer, in the superstitions of their country. The religious ceremonies of Greece were more pompous than folemn; and seemed as much a part of their civil inftitutions, as belonging to fpiritual matters: nor did they imprefs fo deep a fense of invifible beings, and prepare the mind to catch the enthusiasm of the Poet, and to receive with veneration the Phantoms, he prefented.

Our countryman has another kind of superiority over the Greek Poets, even the earliest of them, who, having imbibed the

learning of myfterious Egypt, addicted themselves to Allegory; but our Gothic Bard, inftead of mere arufive allegory, employs the potent agency of facred Fable. When the world becomes learned and phi lofophical, Fable refines into Allegory. But the age of Fable is the golden age of Poetry; when reason, and the steady lamp of inquifitive philofophy, throw their penetrating rays upon the phantoms of Imagination, they difcover them to have been mere fhadows, formed by ignorance. The thunderbolts of Jove, forged in Cimmerian caves: the ceftus of Venus, woven by the hands of the attracting Graces, cease to terrify and allure. Echo, from an amorous nymph, fades into voice, and nothing more;

the

very threads of Iris's fcarf are untwisted; all the Poet's spells are broken, his charms diffolved: deserted on his own enchanted ground, he takes refuge in the groves of Philofophy; but there his divinities evaporate in allegory, in which mystic and insubstantial state, they do but weakly affift his operations. By affociating his mufe

to Philofophy, he hopes the may eftablish with the learned the worship, fhe won from the ignorant; fo he makes her quit the old traditional fable, whence the derived her first authority and power, to follow airy hypothefis, and chimerical fyftems. Allegory, the daughter of fable, is admired by the faftidious Wit, and abftruse Scholar, when her mother begins to be treated as fuperannuated, foolish, and doting; but however well the may please and amuse, not being worshipped as divine, she does not awe and terrify like facred mythology, nor ever can establish the fame fearful devotion, nor affume fuch arbitrary power over the mind. Her perfon is not adapted to the stage, nor her qualities to the business and end of dramatic reprefentation. L'Abbe du Bos has judiciously distinguished the reasons, why allegory is not fit for the drama. What the critic investigated by art and study, the wisdom of nature unfolded to our unlettered Poet, or he would not have refifted the prevalent fashion of his allegorizing age; especially

as Spencer's Fairy Queen was the admired work of the times,

Allegorical beings, performing acts of chivalry, fell in with the taste of an age that affected abftrufe Learning, romantic Valour, and high-flown Gallantry. Prince Arthur, the British Hercules, was brought from ancient ballads and romances, to be allegorized into the knight of magnanimity, at the court of Gloriana. His knights followed him thither, in the fame moralized garb and even the queftynge beaft received no less honour and improvement from the allegorizing art of Spencer, as has been shewn by a Critic of great learning, ingenuity, and taste, in his observations on the Fairy Queen.

Our firft theatrical entertainments, after we emerged from grofs barbarism, were of the allegorical kind. The Christmas carol, and carnival fhews, the pious pastimes of our holy-days, were turned into pageantries