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the reader. Under this head, it would be unpardonable to omit a capital, and, I think, one of the most excellent examples extant, of the beauty here intended, in the third Georgic of Virgil.* The poet having mournfully described a steer struck with a pestilence, and falling down dead in the middle of his work, artfully reminds us of his former services

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Quid labor aut benefacta juvant? Quid vomere terras
Invertisse graves?+

This circumstance would have been sufficient, as it raised our pity from a motive of gratitude; but with this circumstance the tender Virgil was not content; what he adds, therefore, of the natural undeviating temperance of the animal, who cannot have contracted disease by excess, and who for that reason deserved a

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better fate, is moving beyond compare; s

-Atqui non Massica Bacchi

Munera, non illis epulæ nocuere repostæ!
Frondibus, et victu pascuntur simplicis herbæ ;

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By the epithet GRAVES, Virgil insinuates, after his manner, the difficulty and laboriousness of the work.

Pocula sunt fontes liquidi, atque exercita cursu
Flumina, nec somnos abrumpit cura salubres. ·

120 P

Of English poets, perhaps, none have excelled the ingenious Mr. Dyer in this oblique instruction, into which he frequently steals imperceptibly, in his little descriptive poem entitled ĠRONGAR HILL, where he disposes every object so as it may give occasion for some observation on human life,

Denham himself is

not superior to Mr. Dyer in this particular.

After painting a landscape very extensive and

diversified, he adds,

; sbr Durg to svijout a modig

Thus is Nature's vesture wrought,

To instruct our wandering thought; o

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Thus she dresses green and gay,

To disperse our cares away.

ID betere sul tema

Another view from this favourite spot, gives him an opportunity for sliding into the following moralities:

idad sobral non luptA----
2005, 9105 01 singo tilli co, nemult
* How close and small the hedges lie!
What streaks of meadows' cross the eye!

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A step,

* In this light also his poem on the Ruins of Rome deserves a perusal. Dodsley's1 Miscell. Wolf Vic page 178 His Fleece, AT# ed to envoltodal bus viluotibwhich

A step, methinks, may pass the stream,
So little distant dangers seem;

So we mistake the Future's face,
Ey'd through Hope's deluding glass.
As yon summits, soft and fair,
Clad in colours of the air,

Which to those, who journey near,
Barren, and brown, and rough appear,
Still we tread the same coarse way,
The Present's still a cloudy day.

The unexpected insertion of such reflections, imparts to us the same pleasure that we feel, when, in wandering through a wilderness or grove, we suddenly behold, in the turning of the walk, a statue of some VIRTUE or MUSE.

It may be observed in general, that description of the external beauties of nature, is usually the first effort of a young genius, before he hath studied manners and passions. Some of Milton's most early, as well as most exquisite pieces, are his Lycidas, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso; if we may except his Ode on the Nativity of Christ, which is, indeed, prior in the order of time, and D 2

in

which I had the pleasure of reading in manuscript, with Dr. Akenside, is written in a pure and classical taste, and with many happy imitations of Virgil.

in which a penetrating critic might have discovered the seeds of that boundless imagination, which afterwards was to produce the Paradise Lost. This ode, which, by the way, is not suf

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ficiently read nor admired, is also of the descriptive kind; but the objects of its description are great, and striking to the imagination; the false deities of the Heathen forsaking their temples on the birth of our Saviour; divination and oracles at an end; which facts, though, perhaps, not historically true, are poetically beautiful.

The lonely mountains o'er,

And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament!

From haunted spring, and dale

Edg'd with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent;

With flower-enwoven tresses torn,

The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.*

The lovers of poetry (and to such only I write) will not be displeased at my presenting them also with the following image, which is so

strongly

On the morning of Christ's Nativity. Newton's edition, octavo. Vol. ii. page 28, 29, of the Miscellaneous Poems.

strongly conceived, that, methinks, I see at this instant the dæmon it represents:

And sullen Moloch fled,

Hath left in shadows dread,

His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cimbals' ring

They call the griesly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue.*

Attention is irresistibly awakened and engaged by that air of solemnity and enthusiasm that reigns in the following stanzas ;

The oracles are dumb ;+

No voice, or hideous hum,

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving;

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No nightly trance, or breathed spell,

Inspires the pale-ey'd priest from the prophetic cell.

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Such is the power of true poetry, that one is almost inclined to believe the superstitions here alluded to, to be real; and the succeeding circumstances make one start, and look around;

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* See also verses written at a Solemn Music, and on the Passion, in the same volume; and a vacation exercise, page 9. in all which are to be found many strokes of the sublime.

+ Page 28.

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