begin to rise. The dark wave of the lake re

sounds.
with its branches bare?

Bends there not a tree from Mora

It bends, son of Alpin,

My harp hangs on a

in the rustling blast. blasted branch. The sound of its strings is mournful. Does the wind touch thee, oh harp, or is it some passing ghost? It is the hand of Malvina. But bring me the harp, son of Alpin, another song shall arise. My soul shall depart in the sound; my fathers shall hear it in their airy hall. Their dim faces shall hang with joy from their cloud, and their hands receive their son."

Here we have mournful images, and poetical reverie. The English allow that the prose of Ossian is as poetic as verse, and possesses all the inflexions of the latter; and hence a French translation of this, though a literal one, will be, if good, always supportable; for that, which is simple and natural in one language, possesses, these qualities in every language.

It is generally thought that melancholy allusions, taken from the winds, the moon, and the clouds, were unknown to the ancients;

but there are some instances of them in Homer, and a beautiful one in Virgil. Enæas perceives the shade of Dido in the recesses of a forest, as one sees, or fancies that one sees the new moon rising amidst clouds.

"Qualem primo qui surgere mense

Aut videt, aut videsse putat per nubila lunam.”

Observe all the circumstances. It is the moon, which the spectator sees, or fancies that he sees crossing the clouds; consequently the shade of Dido is reduced to a very small compass, but this moon is in its first phasis, and what is this planet at such a time? Does not the shade of Dido itself seem to vanish from the "mind's eye?" Ossian is here traced to Virgil; but it is Ossian at Naples, where the light is purer, and the vapours more transparent.

Young was therefore ignorant of, or rather has ill expressed melancholy, which feeds itself on the contemplation of nature, and which, whether soft or majestic, follows the natural course of feeling. How superior is Milton to the author of the Night Thoughts in the nobi

lity of grief! Nothing is finer than his four last lines of Paradise Lost:

"The world was all before them where to chuse
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
They haud in hand, with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.”

In this passage the reader sees all the solitudes of the world opened to our first father, all those seas which water unknown lands, all the forests of the habitable globe, and man left alone with his sins amidst the deserts of creation.

Harvey, though possessing a less elevated genius than the author of the Night Thoughts, has evinced a softer and more generous sensibility in his "Meditations among the Tombs." He says of an infant, which suddenly died: "What did the little hasty sojourner find so forbidding and disgustful in our upper world, to occasion its precipitate exit? It is written, indeed, of its suffering Saviour that, when he had tasted the vinegar, mingled with gall, he would not drink. And did our new-come stranger begin

* Matthew, chapter 27, verse 34.

to sip the cup of life; but, perceiving the bitterness, turn away its head, and refuse the draught? Was this the cause why the weary babe only opened its eyes, just looked on the light, and then withdrew into the more inviting regions of undisturbed repose?"

Dr. Beattie, a Scotch poet, has introduced the most lovely reverie into his Minstrel. It is when he describes the first effects of the Muse upon a young mountain bard, who as yet does not comprehend the genius, by which he is tormented. At one time the future poet goes and seats himself on the borders of the sea during a tempest; at another, he quits the sports of the village that he may listen, first at a distance, and then more closely to the sound of the bagpipe. Young was, perhaps, appointed by Nature to treat of higher subjects, but still he was not a complete poet. Milton, who sung the misfortunes of primeval man, sighed also in Il Penseroso. Those good writers of the French nation, who have known the charms of reverie, have prodigiously surpassed Young. Chaulieu, like Horace, has mingled thoughts of death with

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the illusions of life. The following well known lines are of a melancholy cast much more to be admired than the exaggerations of the English

poet.

"Grotto, where the murm'ring stream
Mossy bank and flow'ret laves,

Be of thee my future dream,

And of yonder limpid waves.

Fontenay, delicious spot,

Which my youthful life recals,
Oh, when death shall be my lot,
May I rest within thy walls!

Muses, who dispell'd my woe,
While the humble swain you bless'd,

Lovely trees, that saw me grow,

Soon you'll see me sink to rest."

In like manner the inimitable La Fontaine

indulges himself.

"Why should my verse describe a flow'ry bank?

Longer the cruel Fates refuse to spin

My golden thread of life. I shall not sleep
Beneath a canopy of sculptur'd pomp;

But will my rest for this be more disturb'd,
Or will my slumbers less delight impart ?
No, in the trackless desert let me lie," &c.

It was a great poet, from whom such ideas