is good ufe made of it when it is done; for of the two lines,

What female heart can gold defpife?

What cat's averfe to fish?

the first relates merely to the nymph, and the fecond only to the cat. The fixth ftanza contains a melancholy truth, that a favourite has no friend; but the last ends in a pointed sentence of no relation to the purpofe; if what gliftered had been gold, the cat would not have gone into the water; and, if she had, would not lefs have been drowned.

The Profpe of Eton College fuggefts 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 seems not to understand the word. Gray thought his language more poetical as it was more remote from common ufe: 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 apprehenfion, by making gales to be redolent of joy and youth.

Of the Ode on Adverfity, the hint was at first taken from O 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 procefs has now brought me to the wonderful Wonder of Wonders, the two Sifter Odes; by which, though either vulgar ignorance or common fenfe at

first univerfally 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 firft ftanza of the Progrefs of Poetry.

Gray seems in his rapture to confound the images of fpreading found and running water. Aftredm of mufick may be allowed; but where does Mufick, however Smooth and firong, after having visited the verdant vales, rowl down the fleep amain, so as that rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar? If this be faid of Mufick, 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. Criticism difdains to chafe a fchool-boy to his common-places.

To the third it may likewise 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 say many-fpotted, but fcarcely many-potting. This ftanza, however, has fomething pleafing.

Of the second ternary of stanzas, the first endeavours to tell something, and would have told it, had it not been croffed by Hyperion: the fecond defcribes well enough the univerfal prevalence of Poetry; but I am afraid that the conclufion will not rife from the premifes. The caverns of the North and the plains of Chili are not the refidences of Glory and generous Shame.

But

But that Poetry and Virtue go always together is an opinion so pleasing, that I can forgive him who refolves to think it true.

The third stanza 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 wifh away. His position 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 first 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 debafes 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 firft 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 lefs than to invent, and the copy has been unhappily produced ta wrong time. The fiction of Horace was to the VOL. IV, Romans

X

Romans credible; but its revival difgufts us with ap parent and unconquerable falfehood. Incredulus odi.

To felect a fingular event, and fwell it to a giant's bulk by fabulous appendages of fpectres and predictions, has little difficulty; for he that forfakes the probable may always find the marvellous. And it has little ufe; we are affected only as we believe; we are improved only as we find fomething to be imitated or declined. I do not fee that The Bard promotes any truth, moral or political.

His ftanzas are too long, efpecially his epodes; the ode is finished before the ear has learned its measures, and confequently before it can receive pleasure from their confonance and recurrence.

Of the first stanza the abrupt beginning has been celebrated; but technical beauties can give praife only to the inventor. It is in the power of any man to rush abruptly upon his fubject, that has read the ballad of Johnny Armstrong,

Is there ever a man in all Scotland

The initial resemblances, or alliterations, ruin, ruthlefs, helm or hauberk, are below the grandeur of a poem that endeavours at fublimity.

In the fecond ftanza the Bard is well defcribed; but in the third we have the puerilities of obfolete mythology. When we are told that Cadwallo bush'd the formy main, and that Medred made huge Plinlimmon bore his cloud-top'd head, attention recoils from the repetition of a tale that, even when it was first heard, was heard with fcorn.

The weaving of the winding Sheet he borrowed, as he owns, from the northern Bards; but their texture, however, was very properly the work of female powers,

as

as the art of fpinning the thread of life in another mythology. Theft is always dangerous; Gray has made weavers of his flaughtered bards, by a fiction outrageous and incongruous. They are then called upon to Weave the warp, and weave the woof, perhaps with no great propriety; for it is by croffing the woof with the warp that men weave the web or piece; and the first ne was dearly bought by the admiffion of its wretched correfpondent, Give ample room and verge enough. He has, however, no other line as bad.

The third ftanza of the fecond ternary is commended, I think, beyond its merit. The perfonification is indiftinct. Thirst and Hunger are not alike; and their features, to make the imagery perfect, fhould have been difcriminated. We are told, in the fame ftanza, how towers are fed. But I will no longer look for particular faults; yet let it be obferved that the ode might have been concluded with an action of better example; but fuicide is always to be had, without expence of thought.

Thefe odes are marked by glittering accumulations of ungraceful ornaments; they ftrike, rather than pleafe; the images are magnified by affectation; the language is laboured into harfhnefs. The mind of the writer feems to work with unnatural violence. Double, double, toil and trouble. He has a kind of ftrutting dignity, and is tall by walking on tiptoe. His art and his ftruggle are too vifible, and there is too little appearance of eafe and nature.

To fay that he has no beauties, would be unjuft: a man like him, of great learning and great induftry, could not but produce fomething valuable. When he pleafes leaft, it can only be faid that a good defign was ill directed.