Divided pair! forgive the wrong,
While I, with tears, your fate rehearse:
I'll join the widow's plaintive fong,
And fave the lover in my verse.!!!

Confiderable emotions must arise in the breast, on hearing this well read. If you reach the heart, you need no better criterion by which you may judge of your merit in reading it.

In

The full, low, manly tone of voice is so abfolutely neceffary in those who wish to excel in reading, that we fhall give the scholar a poem in which he may practise it to the greateft advantage and effect. perufing moft poetical productions, if you occafionally introduce it, it gives a richness and variety that afford a confiderable delight. In the compofition we are now about to recommend to the reader, this particular quality may be exercised throughout every part of it, without the leaft fear of violating the meaning or fpirit of the poet.

OUR SAVIOUR's PASSION.

The Author not known,

LET there be a dignified folemnity in your voice, and your look accord with the gravity of the fcene.

let

BEHOLD th'astonish'd fun starts back,

No light his blacken'd beams difplay;

Dark

Darkness her fable wing expands,
And gloomy night invades the day:
But yet tho' night maintains her reign,
No planets fail along the skies,

No moon, the lovely queen of night,
No glorious constellations rife:

Now you must be peculiarly folemn, and your voice very low and full.

One dark, black, difmal gloom of clouds
Broods o'er the earth from pole to pole;
One face of horror fpreads around,

And veils the univerfal whole.

See how the rending clouds divide!
How forky lightnings glaring fly!
Hark! how the awful thunders roar,

And grumble thro' the angry sky.

Mark those words in particular that keep up the awful grandeur of the fcene-fuch as forky lightnings,"

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glaring," awful thunders," "grumble," "angry,"

and all those of the fame kind,

The frighted rocks are burft in twain;
The everlasting mountains shake;
The yawning earth her womb diftends,
And from their graves the dead awake.
Ten thousand furious whirlwinds rage;
Along the trembling ground they sweep;
And fwell from its immenfe abyfs

The furges of the bellowing deep.
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Mark

Mark all thofe kind of words which we before recommended-fuch as "frighted rocks," "yawning earth," "furious whirlwinds," "bellowing deep," &c. &c.

Thou deep! why doft thou lafh the shore?
Ye furious winds! why do you roar?

Why do the dead awake?

Ye hills! why do ye shake?
Why do the rocks divide?

Why burst with opening wide?
Why do the thunders shake the pole?
Why do the volum'd lightnings roll?
Why art thou hid, thou fun, on high?
Thou moon and stars, that fill the sky,
Why is your pleafing light

Involv'd in gloom and night?

You must read these various questions with as much variety as you can; ftill, of course, preserving the folemn grandeur that breathes through the whole.

Now look up with a degree of awe and dread.

See yonder! where the Lord of Life,
The great Meffiah's us'd with fcorn!
See how the trickling blood defcends,
They crown his facred head with thorn!
See with contempt they drag along
My King! my Saviour, and my God!
O fight! inhuman fight of woe!

His flesh is furrow'd with the rod!

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And now, O! horror-bearing scene!
With nails they pierce his feet and hands,
And innocence upon the cross,

The executioner extends!
Mark how his tender body writhes,
To heav'n he lifts his failing eyes;
Th'Incarnate bows his blameless head,
And for his very murd❜rers dies.

For this, the dead awake;
For this, the mountains fhake;
For this, the cheerful light
Is veil'd in gloomy night;
For this, the rocks divide,
For this, the wind and tide
Refound against the shore;
For this, the thunders roar;

For this, the lightnings flame;

For this, convulfions tear the universal frame.

The laft line with great deliberation and energy.

The four ORIENTAL ECLOGUES by Mr. COLLINS, have been long admired for their great poetical merit, and we think they afford many and various opportunities for a reader of nice difcrimination to exert his powers with confiderable effect. We fhall, therefore, here infert them; particularly advising, in the perufal, an even regular tone of expreffion, and a Smooth

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fmoothness of delivery, which will well accord with the peculiar harmony of the verfe in which thefe beautiful compositions are written.

ECLOGUE I.

SELLM, OR THE SHEPHERD'S MORAL.

Scene, a Valley near Bagdat. Time, the Morning.

As you will have to lower your voice after the fix first lines, you had better begin on a little higher key than you otherwife would.-Observe the fmoothness of tone which we before recommended, and carefully avoid any thing like a check or jerk in your voice, but let it flow, as it were, like a regular and uniform stream,

"YE Perfian maids, attend your poet's lays,
"And hear how fhepherds pass their golden days.
"Not all are bleft whom Fortune's hand fuftains
"With wealth in courts, nor all that haunt the
"plains:

"Well may your hearts believe the truths I tell;
"'Tis virtue makes the blifs, where'er we dwell,"
Thus Selim fung, by facred truth inspir'd;
Nor praise, but fuch as truth bestow'd, defir'd:
Wife in himself, his meaning fongs convey'd
Informing morals to the fhepherd maid;
Or taught the fwains that fureft blifs to find,
What groves nor ftreams beftow-a virtuous mind.

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