probably, been preserved. Shakspeare possessed in a far superior degree, if I may be allowed the term, the powers of superhuman creation, and no poet ever enjoyed such an unlimited dominion over the fears and superstitions of mankind. Yet the acuteness, the inexhaustible variety of his genius, his talents for humour, and his almost intuitive penetration into the follies and vices of his species, enabled him to avoid, in a great measure, that credulity which his wild, terrific, yet delightful and consistent fictions, almost riveted upon others. Milton too had a peculiar predilection for traditionary tales, and legendary lore, and, in his early youth, spent much time in reading romantic narratives; but the deep and varied erudition which distinguished his career, for no man in Europe, at that time, possessed a wider field of intellect, sufficiently protected him from their delusive influence, though, to the latest period of life, he still retained much of his original partiality: Ossian, however, that melancholy but sublime Bard of other times, seems to have given implicit credit to the superstitions of his country, and his poems are, therefore, replete with a variety of immaterial agents; but these are of a kind rather calculated to soothe and support the mind, than to shake and harrow it, as the gothic, with malignant and mysterious potency. In this age, when science and literature have spread so extensively, the heavy clouds of superstition have been dispersed, and have assumed a lighter and less formidable hue; for though the tales of Walpole, Reeve, and Radcliffe, or the poetry of Wieland,* Burger, and Lewis, still powerfully arrest attention, and keep an ardent curiosity alive, yet is their machinery, by no means, an object of popular belief, nor can it, I should hope, now lead to dangerous credulity, as when in the times of Tasso, Shakspeare, and even Milton, witches and wizards, spectres and fairies, were nearly as important subjects of faith as the most serious doctrines of religion. Yet have we had one melancholy instance, and toward the middle of the eighteenth cen * The Oberon of this exquisite poet, which, in sportive play of fancy, may vie with the Muse of Shakspeare, and which, in the conduct of its fable, is superior to any work extant, richly merits an english dress. It is said that the late Mr. Sixt of Canterbury left a translation of this Epic. If it be well executed, it would be a highly valuable present to the public, A tury, where disappointment, operating upon enthusiasm, has induced effects somewhat similar to those recorded of the celebrated Italian. In the year 1756 died our lamented COLLINS, one of our most exquisite poets, and of whom, perhaps, without exaggeration it may be asserted, that he partook of the credulity and enthusiasm of Tasso, the magic wildness of Shakspeare, the sublimity of Milton, and the pathos of Ossian. He had early formed sanguine expectations of fame and applause, but reaped nothing but penury and neglect, and stung with indignation at the unmerited treatment his productions had met with, he burnt the remaining copies with his own hands. His Odes to Fear, on the Poetical Character, to Evening, the Passions, and on the Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland, strongly mark the bias of his mind to all that is awefully wild and terrible. His address to Fear, Dark Power! with shudd'ring meek submitted thought Be mine to read the visions old Which thy awakening bards have told : Hold each strange tale devoutly true, was prompted by what he actually felt, for, like Tasso, he was, in some measure, a convert to the imagery he drew; and the beautiful lines in which he describes the Italian, might, with equal propriety, be applied to himself: Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind His powers, however, in exciting the tender emotions, were superior to Tasso's; and, in pathetic simplicity, nothing, perhaps, can exceed his Odes to Pity, on the Death of Colonel Ross, on the Death of Thomson, and his Dirge in Cymbeline, which abound with * Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands. + The beautiful and tender imagery, in a stanza of this little dirge The Red-breast oft at evening hours Shall kindly lend his little aid, With hoary moss and gathered flowers, To deck the ground where thou art laid.— has been so much a favourite with the poets, that I am tempted to throw a few of their elegant descriptions into the form of a note. In the Anthologia, a somewhat similar idea is thus expressed in the Epitaph on Timon: Ως επ' εμοί μη δ' όρνις εν ειαρι κάφον ερείδοι IX. Nor print the feather'd warbler in the spring VOL. I. F WAKEFIELD. passages that irresistibly make their way to the heart. He who could feel, with so much sensibility, the sorrows and misfortunes of others, and could pour the plaint of woe with such harmonious skill, was soon himself to be an object Horace has a passage of still greater similitude with regard to the wood-pigeon: Me fabulose Vulture in Appulo Altricis extra limen Apuliæ, Ludo fatigatumque somno, Texere.. Fronde novâ puerum palumbes Carm. lib. iii. od. 4. And we all remember the ballad of our infancy, and which, perhaps, more immediately gave rise to succeeding imitations : And Robin Red-breast carefully Did cover them with leaves. Shakspeare has, in the following lines of his Cymbeline, tenderly alluded to this bird, and which certainly suggested to Collins the stanza we have quoted: With fairest flowers, I'll sweeten thy sad grave: Thou shalt not lack. Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none, |