tween penury and fatiety. The parts feem artificially difpofed, with fufficient coherence, fo as that they cannot change their places without injury to the general defign.

His images are difplayed with fuch luxuriance of expreffion, that they are hidden, like Butler's' Moon, by a "Veil of Light;" they are forms fantastically loft under fuperfluity of drefs. Pars minima eft ipfa puella fui. The words are multiplied till the fenfe is hardly perceived; attention deferts the mind, and fettles in the ear. The reader wanders through the gay diffufion, fometimes amazed, and fometimes delighted; but, after many turnings in the flowery labyrinth, comes out as he went in. He remarked little, and laid hold on nothing,

To his verification juftice requires that praise fhould not be denied. In the general fabrication of his lines he is perhaps fuperior to any other writer of blank verfe; his flow is fmooth, and his paufes are mufical; but the concatenation of his verfes is commonly too long continued, and the full clofe does not recur with fufficient frequency. The fenfe is carried on through a long intertexture of complicated claufes, and as nothing is dif tinguished, nothing is remembered.

The exemption which blank verfe affords from the neceffity of closing the sense with the couplet, betrays luxuriant and active minds into fuch felfindulgence, that they pile image upon image, ornament upon ornament, and are not eafily perfuaded to close the fenfe at all. Blank verfe will therefore, I fear, be too often found in defcription exuberant, in argument loquacious, and in narration tiresome.

His diction is certainly poetical as it is not profaick, and elegant as it is not vulgar. He is to be commended as having fewer artifices of difguft than most of his brethren of the blank fong. He rarely either recalls old phrafes, or twifts his metre into harth inverfions. The fenfe, however, of his words is ftrained; when "he views the Ganges "from Alpine heights;" that is, from mountains like the Alps. And the pedant furely intrudes, (but when was blank verfe without pedantry?) when he tells how "Planets abfolve the stated round of "Time."

It is generally known to the readers of poetry that he intended to revife and augment this work, 1 ut died before he had completed his defign. The reformed work as he left it, and the additions which he had made, are very properly retained in the late collection. He feems to have fomewhat contracted his diffufion; but I know not whether he has gained in clofeness what he has loft in fplendour. In the additional book the "Tale of So"lon" is too long.

One great defect of his poem is very properly cenfured by Mr. Walker, unlefs it may be faid in his defence, that what he has omitted was not properly in his plan. "His picture of man is "grand and beautiful, but unfinished. The im"mortality of the foul, which is the natural con"fequence of the appetites and powers fhe is in"veited with, is fcarcely once hinted throughout "the poem. This deficiency is amply supplied "by the mafterly pencil of Dr. Young; who, "like a good philofopher, has invincibly proved the "immortality of man, from the grandeur of his "conceptions, and the meannefs and mifery of

"his ftate; for this reafon, a few paffages are "felected from the Night Thoughts,' which, "with those from Akenfide, feem to form a com"plete view of the powers, fituation, and end of "man." Exercifes for Improvement in Elocu'cution,' p. 66.

His other poems are now to be confidered; but a fhort confideration will dispatch them. It is not eafy to guefs why he addicted himself fo diligently to lyrick poetry, having neither the eafe and airiness of the lighter, nor the vehemence and elevation of the grander ode. When he lays his ill-fated hand upon his harp, his former powers feem to defert him; he has no longer his luxuriance of expreffion, nor variety of images. His thoughts are cold, and his words inelegant. Yet fuch was his love of lyricks, that, having written. with great vigour and poignancy his "Epiftle to "Curio," he transformed it afterwards into an ode difgraceful only to its author.

Of his odes nothing favourable can be faid; the fentiments commonly want force, nature, or novelty; the diction is fometimes haríh and uncouth, the ftanzas ill-conftructed and unpleafant, and the rhymes diffonant, or unfkilfully difpofed, too dif tant from each other, or arranged with too little regard to established ufe, and therefore perplexing to the ear, which in a fhort compofition has not time to grow familiar with an innovation.

To examine fuch compofitions fingly, cannot be required; they have doubtlefs brighter and darker parts, but when they are once found to be generally dull, all further labour may be spared; for to what ufe can the work be criticifed that will not be read?

3

GRA Y.

THOMAS GRAY, the fon of Mr. Philip Gray, a fcrivener of London, was born in Cornhill, November 26, 1716. His grammatical education he received at Eton under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother's brother, then affistant to Dr. George; and when he left fchool, in 1734, entered a penfioner at Peterhouse in Cambridge.

The tranfition from the school to the college is, to moft young scholars, the time from which they date their years of manhood, liberty, and happinefs; but Gray feems to have been very little delighted with academical gratifications; he liked at Cambridge neither the mode of life nor the fashion of study, and lived fullenly on to the time when his attendance on lectures was no longer required. As he intended to profefs the Common Law, he took no degree.

When he had been at Cambridge about five years, Mr. Horace Walpole, whofe friendfhip he had gained at Eton, invited him to travel with him as his companion. They wandered through France into Italy; and Gray's Letters contain a very pleafing account of many parts of their journey. But unequal friendships are easily dif folved at Florence they quarrelled, and parted; and Mr. Walpole is now content to have it told that it was by his fault, If we look, however,

without

without prejudice on the world, we shall find that men, whofe consciousness of their own merit fets them above the compliances of fervility, are apt enough in their affociation with fuperiours to watch their own dignity with troublesome and punctilious jealoufy, and in the fervour of independance to exact that attention which they refuse to pay. Part they did, whatever was the quarrel, and the rest of their travels was doubtlefs more unpleasant to them both. Gray continued his journey in a manner fuitable to his own little fortune, with only an occafional fervant.

He returned to England in September 1741, and in about two months afterwards buried his father; who had, by an injudicious waste of money upon a new houfe, fo much leffened his fortune, that Gray thought himself too poor to ftudy the law. He therefore retired to Cambridge, where he foon after became bachelor of Civil Law; and where, without liking the place or its inhabitants, or profeffing to like them, he paffed, except a short refidence in London, the rest of his life. ་

About this time he was deprived of Mr. West, the fon of a chancellor of Ireland, a friend on whom he appears to have fet a high value, and who deferved his efteem by the powers which he fhews in his Letters, and in the "Ode to May," which Mr. Mafon bas preferved, as well as by the fincerity with which, when Gray fent him part of "Agrippina," a tragedy that he had just begun, he gave an opinion which probably intercepted the progrefs of the work, and which the judgment of every reader will confirm. It was certainly no lofs to the English flage that " Agrippina" was never finished.