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Restor'd behold! the well-dissembled scene
Calls from embellish'd eyes the lovely tear,
Or lights up mirth in modest cheeks again.
Lo! vanish'd monster-land. Lo! driven away
Those that Apollo's sacred walls profane;
Their wild creation scatter'd, where a world
Unknown to Nature, chaos more confus'd,
O'er the brute scene its ouran-outangs* pours;
Detested forms! that, on the mind imprest,
Corrupt, confound, and barbarize an age.

"

Behold! all thine again the sister-arts,
Thy graces they, knit in harmonious dance.
Nurs'd by the treasure from a nation drain'd
Their works to purchase, they to nobler rouse
Their untam'd genius, their unfetter'd thought;
Of pompous tyrants, and of dreaming monks,
The gaudy tools, and prisoners, no more.

"Lo! numerous domes a Burlington confess : For kings and senates fit, the palace see! The temple breathing a religious awe; Ev'n fram'd with elegance the plain retreat, The private dwelling. Certain in his aim, Taste, never idly working, saves expense. "See! Sylvan scenes, where, Art, alone, pretends

To dress her mistress, and disclose her charms:
Such as a Pope in miniature has shown;

A Bathurst o'er the widening forest spreads;
And such as form a Richmond, Chiswick, Stowe.

"August, around, what public works I see! Lo! stately streets, lo! squares that court the breeze, In spite of those to whom pertains the care, Ingulfing more than founded Roman ways. Lo! ray'd from cities o'er the brighten'd land, Connecting sea to sea, the solid road. Lo! the proud arch (no vile exactor's stand) With easy sweep bestrides the chafing flood. See! long canals, and deepen'd rivers, join Each part with each, and with the circling main The whole enliven'd isle. Lo! ports expand, Free as the winds and waves, their sheltering arms. Lo! streaming comfort o'er the troubled deep, On every pointed coast the light-house towers; And, by the broad imperious mole repell'd, Hark! how the baffled storm indignant roars." As thick to view these varied wonders rose, Shook all my soul with transport, unassur'd, The vision broke; and, on my waking eye, Rush'd the still ruins of dejected Rome.

ODE.

TELL me, thou soul of her I love,
Ah! tell me, whither art thou fled;
To what delightful world above,
Appointed for the happy dead?

Or dost thou, free, at pleasure, roam,
And sometimes share thy lover's woe;
Where, void of thee, his cheerless home
Can now, alas! no comfort know?

* A creature which, of all brutes, most resembles man. -See Dr. Tyson's treatise on this animal.

Okely woods, near Cirencester.

Oh! if thou hover'st round my walk, While under every well-known tree, I to thy fancied shadow talk,

And every tear is full of thee;

Should then the weary eye of grief,
Beside some sympathetic stream,
In slumber find a short relief,
O visit thou my soothing dream!

THE HAPPY MAN.

HE's not the Happy Man, to whom is given
A plenteous fortune by indulgent Heaven;
Whose gilded roofs on shining columns rise,
And painted walls enchant the gazer's eyes;
Whose table flows with hospitable cheer,
And all the various bounty of the year;
Whose valleys smile, whose gardens breathe the
Spring,

Whose carved mountains bleat, and forests sing;
For whom the cooling shade in Summer twines,
While his full cellars give their generous wines;
From whose wide fields unbounded Autumn pours
A golden tide into his swelling stores:
Whose Winter laughs; for whom the liberal gales
Stretch the big sheet, and toiling commerce sails;
When yielding crowds attend, and pleasure serves
While youth, and health, and vigor string his nerves
Ev'n not at all these, in one rich lot combin'd,
Can make the Happy Man, without the mind;
Where Judgment sits clear-sighted, and surveys
The chain of Reason with unerring gaze;
Where Fancy lives, and to the brightening eyes
His fairer scenes, and bolder figures rise;
Where social Love exerts her soft command,
And plays the passions with a tender hand,
And all the moral harmony of life.
Whence every virtue flows, in rival strife,

SONG.

HARD is the fate of him who loves,
Yet dares not tell his trembling pain,
But to the sympathetic groves,

But to the lonely listening plain.

Oh! when she blesses next your shade,
Oh! when her footsteps next are seen
In flowery tracts along the mead,
In fresher mazes o'er the green,

Ye gentle spirits of the vale,

To whom the tears of love are dear, From dying lilies waft a gale,

And sigh my sorrows in her ear.

O, tell her what she cannot blame,
Though fear my tongue must ever bind
O, tell her that my virtuous flame
Is as her spotless soul refin'd.

Not her own guardian angel eyes
With chaster tenderness his care,
Not purer her own wishes rise,

Not holier her own sighs in prayer.

But if, at first, her virgin fear

Should start at love's suspected name, With that of friendship soothe her earTrue love and friendship are the same.

SONG.

FOR ever, Fortune, wilt thou prove An unrelenting foe to love,

And when we meet a mutual heart, Come in between, and bid us part?

Bid us sigh on from day to day,
And wish, and wish the soul away;
Till youth and genial years are flown,
And all the life of life is gone?

But busy, busy, still art thou,
To bind the loveless joyless vow,
The heart from pleasure to delude,
To join the gentle to the rude.

For once,
O Fortune, hear my prayer,
And I absolve thy future care;
All other blessings I resign,
Make but the dear Amanda mine.

ODE.

O NIGHTINGALE, best poet of the grove,
That plaintive strain can ne'er belong to thee
Blest in the full possession of thy love:

O lend that strain, sweet nightingale, to me!

'Tis mine, alas! to mourn my wretched fate:
I love a maid, who all my bosom charms,
Yet lose my days without this lovely mate;
Inhuman Fortune keeps her from my arms.

You, happy birds! by Nature's simple laws
Lead your soft lives, sustain'd by Nature's fare;
You dwell wherever roving fancy draws,

And love and song is all your pleasing care:

But we, vain slaves of interest and of pride,
Dare not be blest lest envious tongues should
blame :

And hence, in vain I languish for my bride;
O mourn with me, sweet bird, my hapless flame.

HYMN ON SOLITUDE. HAIL, mildly-pleasing Solitude, Companion of the wise and good, But, from whose holy, piercing eye, The herd of fools and villains fly.

Oh how I love with thee to walk, And listen to thy whisper'd talk, Which innocence and truth imparts, And melts the most obdurate hearts.

A thousand shapes you wear with ease,
And still in every shape you please.
Now wrapt in some mysterious dream,
A lone philosopher you seem;
Now quick from hill to vale you fly,
And now you sweep the vaulted sky;
A shepherd next, you haunt the plain,
And warble forth your oaten strain.
A lover now, with all the grace
Of that sweet passion in your face;
Then, calm'd to friendship, you assume
The gentle-looking Hartford's bloom,
As, with her Musidora, she
(Her Musidora fond of thee)
Amid the long withdrawing vale,
Awakes the rival'd nightingale.

Thine is the balmy breath of morn,
Just as the dew-bent rose is born;
And while meridian fervors beat,
Thine is the woodland dumb retreat;
But chief, when evening scenes decay,
And the faint landscape swims away,
Thine is the doubtful soft decline,
And that best hour of musing thine.

Descending angels bless thy train,
The virtues of the sage, and swain;
Plain Innocence, in white array'd,
Before thee lifts her fearless head:
Religion's beams around thee shine,
And cheer thy glooms with light divine:
About thee sports sweet Liberty;
And rapt Urania sings to thee.

Oh, let me pierce thy secret cell!
And in thy deep recesses dwell;
Perhaps from Norwood's oak-clad hill,
When Meditation has her fill,
I just may cast my careless eyes
Where London's spiry turrets rise,
Think of its crimes, its cares, its pain,
Then shield me in the woods again.

TO THE

REV. MR. MURDOCH,

RECTOR OF STRADDISHALL, IN SUFFOLK, 1738.

THUS safely low, my friend, thou canst not fall:
Here reigns a deep tranquillity o'er all;
No noise, no care, no vanity, no strife;
Men, woods, and fields, all breathe untroubled life
Then keep each passion down, however dear;
Trust me the tender are the most severe.
Guard, while 'tis thine, thy philosophic ease,
And ask no joy but that of virtuous peace;
That bids defiance to the storms of Fate,
High bliss is only for a higher state.

AMBROSE PHILIPS.

AMBROSE PHILIPS, a poet and miscellaneous | who found his own juvenile pastorals undervalued, writer, was born in 1671, claiming his descent from sent to the same paper a comparison between his an ancient Leicestershire family. He received his and those of Philips, in which he ironically gave education at St. John's College, Cambridge; and, the preference to the latter. The irony was not attaching himself to the Whig party, he published, detected till it encountered the critical eye of Adin 1700, an epitome of Hacket's life of Archbishop dison; and the consequence was, that it ruined the Williams, by which he obtained an introduction to reputation of Philips as a composer of pastoral. Addison and Steele. Soon after, he made an at- When the accession of George I. brought the tempt in pastoral poetry, which, for a time, brought Whigs again into power, Philips was made a Westhim into celebrity. In 1709, being then at Copen-minster justice, and, soon after, a commissioner for hagen, he addressed to the earl of Dorset some the lottery. In 1718, he was the editor of a periverses, descriptive of that capital, which are re- odical paper, called "The Freethinker." In 1724, garded as his best performance; and these, together he accompanied to Ireland his friend Dr. Boulter, with two translations from Sappho's writings, created archbishop of Armagh, to whom he acted stand pre-eminent in his works of this class. In as secretary. He afterwards represented the county 1712 he made his appearance as a dramatic writer, of Armagh in parliament; and the places of secrein the tragedy of "The Distrest Mother," acted at tary to the Lord Chancellor, and Judge of the PreDrury-lane with great applause, and still considered rogative Court, were also conferred upon him. He as a stock play. It cannot, indeed, claim the merit returned to England in 1748, and died in the folof originality, being closely copied from Racine's lowing year, at the age of seventy-eight. "Andromacque;" but it is well written, and skilfully adapted to the English stage.

A storm now fell upon him relatively to his pastorals, owing to an exaggerated compliment from Tickell, who, in a paper of the Guardian, had made the true pastoral pipe descend in succession from Theocritus to Virgil, Spenser, and Philips. Pope,

The verses which he composed, not only to young ladies in the nursery, but to Walpole when Minister of State, and which became known by the ludicrous appellation of namby-pamby, are easy and sprightly, but with a kind of infantile air, which fixed upon them the above name.

TO THE EARL OF DORSET.

Copenhagen, March 9, 1709.
FROM frozen climes, and endless tracts of snow,
From streams which northern winds forbid to flow,
What present shall the Muse to Dorset bring,
Or how, so near the Pole, attempt to sing?
The hoary winter here conceals from sight
All pleasing objects which to verse invite.
The hills and dales, and the delightful woods,
The flowery plains, and silver-streaming floods,
By snow disguis'd, in bright confusion lie,
And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye.
No gentle breathing breeze prepares the spring,
No birds within the desert region sing.
The ships, unmov'd, the boisterous winds defy,
While rattling chariots o'er the ocean fly.
The vast Leviathan wants room to play,
And spout his waters in the face of day.

The starving wolves along the main sea prowl,
And to the Moon in icy valleys howl.
O'er many a shining league the level main
Here spreads itself into a glassy plain:
There solid billows of enormous size,
Alps of green ice, in wild disorder rise.

And yet but lately have I seen, ev'n here,
The winter in a lovely dress appear.
Ere yet the clouds let fall the treasur'd snow,
Or winds begun through hazy skies to blow,
At evening a keen eastern breeze arose,
And the descending rain unsullied froze.
Soon as the silent shades of night withdrew.
The ruddy morn disclos'd at once to view
The face of Nature in a rich disguise,
And brighten'd every object to my eyes:
For every shrub, and every blade of grass,
And every pointed thorn, seem'd wrought in glass;
In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns show,
While through the ice the crimson berries glow.

The thick-sprung reeds, which watery marshes yield,
Seem'd polish'd lances in a hostile field.
The stag, in limpid currents, with surprise,
Sees crystal branches on his forehead rise.
The spreading oak, the beech, and towering pine,
Glaz'd over, in the freezing ether shine.
The frighted birds the rattling branches shun,
Which wave and glitter in the distant sun.
When, if a sudden gust of wind arise,
The brittle forest into atoms flies,

The crackling wood beneath the tempest bends,
And in a spangled shower the prospect ends:
Or, if a southern gale the region warm,
And by degrees unbind the wintry charm,
The traveller a miry country sees,

And journeys sad beneath the dropping trees:
Like some deluded peasant, Merlin leads

Through fragrant bowers, and through delicious

meads:

While here enchanted gardens to him rise,
And airy fabrics there attract his eyes,
His wandering feet the magic paths pursue,
And, while he thinks the fair illusion true,
The trackless scenes disperse in fluid air,
And woods, and wilds, and thorny ways appear.
A tedious road the weary wretch returns,
And, as he goes, the transient vision mourns.

The birds, dismiss'd, (while you remain,)
Bore back their empty car again:
Then you, with looks divinely mild,
In every heavenly feature smil'd,
And ask'd, what new complaints I made,
And why I call'd you to my aid?

What frenzy in my bosom rag'd, And by what care to be assung'd? What gentle youth I would allure, Whom in my artful toils secure? Who does thy tender heart subdue, Tell me, my Sappho, tell me who?

Though now he shuns thy longing arms,
He soon shall court thy slighted charms;
Though now thy offerings he despise,
He soon to thee shall sacrifice;

Though now he freeze, he soon shall burn, And be thy victim in his turn.

Celestial visitant, once more
Thy needful presence I implore!
In pity come and ease my grief,
Bring my distemper'd soul relief:
Favor thy suppliant's hidden fires,
And give me all my heart desires.

A HYMN TO VENUS.

From the Greek of Sappho.

O VENUS, beauty of the skies,
To whom a thousand temples rise
Gaily false in gentle smiles,
Full of love-perplexing wiles,
O, goddess! from my heart remove
The wasting cares and pains of love.

If ever thou hast kindly heard
A song in soft distress preferr'd,
Propitious to my tuneful vow,
O, gentle goddess, hear me now.
Descend, thou bright immortal guest,
In all thy radiant charms confest.

Thou once didst leave almighty Jove,
And all the golden roofs above:
The car thy wanton sparrows drew;
Hovering in air they lightly flew;
As to my bower they wing'd their way,
I saw their quivering pinions play.

A FRAGMENT OF SAPPHO. BLEST as the immortal gods is he, The youth who fondly sits by thee, And hears and sees thee all the while Softly speak, and sweetly smile.

"Twas this deprived my soul of rest,
And rais'd such tumults in my breast;
For while I gaz'd, in transport tost,
My breath was gone, my voice was lost.

My bosom glow'd; the subtle flame
Ran quick through all my vital frame;
O'er my dim eyes a darkness hung,
My ears with hollow murmurs rung.

In dewy damps my limbs were chill'd,
My blood with gentle horrors thrill'd;
My feeble pulse forgot to play,
I fainted, sunk, and died away.

2 S 2

WILLIAM COLLINS.

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WILLIAM COLLINS, a distinguished modern poet, of disorder in his mind, perceptible to any but himwas born at Chichester, in 1720 or 1721, where his self. He was reading the New Testament. "I father exercised the trade of a hatter. He received have but one book," said he, "but it is the best." his education at Winchester College, whence he en- He was finally consigned to the care of his sister, in tered as a commoner of Queen's College, Oxford. whose arms he finished his short and melancholy In 1741, he procured his election into Magdalen course, in the year 1756. college as a demy; and it was here that he wrote It is from his Odes, that Collins derives his chief his poetical "Epistle to Sir Thomas Hanmer," poetical fame; and in compensation for the neglect and his 'Oriental Eclogues;" of both which with which they were treated at their first appearpieces the success was but moderate. In 1744, he ance, they are now almost universally regarded as came to London as a literary adventurer, and va- the first productions of the kind in our language, rious were the projects which he formed in this with respect to vigor of conception, boldness and capacity. In 1746, however, he ventured to lay variety of personification, and genuine warmth of before the public a volume of "Odes, Descriptive feeling. They are well characterized in an essay and Allegorical;" but so callous was the national prefixed to his works, in an ornamented edition pubtaste at this time, that their sale did not pay for the lished by Cadell and Davies, with which we shall printing. Collins, whose spirit was high, returned conclude this article. "He will be acknowledged to the bookseller his copy-money, burnt all the un-(says the author) to possess imagination, sweetness, sold copies, and as soon as it lay in his power, in- bold and figurative language. His numbers dwell demnified him for his small loss; yet among these on the ear, and easily fix themselves in the memory. odes, were many pieces which now rank among the His vein of sentiment is by turns tender and lofty, finest lyric compositions in the language. After always tinged with a degree of melancholy, but not this mortification, he obtained from the booksellers possessing any claim to originality. His originality a small sum for an intended translation of Aristotle's consists in his manner, in the highly figurative garb Poetics, and paid a visit to an uncle, Lieutenant- in which he clothes abstract ideas, in the felicity of Colonel Martin, then with the army in Germany. his expressions, and his skill in embodying ideal The Colonel dying soon after, left Collins a legacy creations. He had much of the mysticism of poetry, of 2000l., a sum which raised him to temporary and sometimes became obscure by aiming at imopulence; but he now soon became incapable of pressions stronger than he had clear and well-defin'd every mental exertion. Dreadful depression of ideas to support. Had his life been prolonged, and spirits was an occasional attendant on his malady, with life had he enjoyed that ease which is necessary for which he had no remedy but the bottle. It was for the undisturbed exercise of the faculties, he about this time, that it was thought proper to con- would probably have risen far above most of his fine him in a receptacle of lunatics. Dr. Johnson contemporaries." paid him a visit at Islington, when there was nothing

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