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spite of them, we are in a fair way of becoming ourselves another useless example to future ages.

Simplicity of manners may be more easily preserved in a republic than a monarchy; but if once lost, may be sooner recovered in a monarchy, the example of a court being of great efficacy, either to reform or to corrupt a people; that alone were sufficient to discountenance the wearing of gold or silver, either in clothes or equipage, and if the same were prohibited by law, the saving so much bullion would be the smallest benefit of such an institution; there being nothing more apt to debase the virtue and good sense of our gentry of both sexes than the trifling vanity of apparel, which we have learned from France, and which hath had such visible ill consequences on the genius of that people. Wiser nations have made it their care to shut out this folly by severe laws and penalties, and its spreading among us can forebode no good, if there be any truth in the observation of one of the ancients, that the direct way to ruin a man is to dress him up in fine clothes.1

It cannot be denied that luxury of dress giveth a light behavior to our women, which may pass for a small offence, because it is a common one, but is in truth the source of great corruptions. For this very offence the prophet Isaiah denounced a severe judg ment against the ladies of his time. The scab, the stench, and the burning are terrible pestilential symptoms, and our ladies would do well to consider, they may chance to resemble those of Zion, in their punishment as well as their offence.

But we are doomed to be undone. Neither the plain reason of the thing, nor the experience of past ages, nor the examples we have before our eyes, can restrain us from imitating, not to say surpassing, the most corrupt and ruined people in those very points of luxury that ruined them. Our gaming, our operas, our masquerades, are, in spite of our debts and poverty, become the wonder of our neighbors. If there be any man so void of all thought and common sense, as not to see where this must end, let him but compare what Venice was at the league of Cambray, with what it is at present, and he will be convinced how truly those fashionable pastimes are calculated to depress and ruin a nation.

It is not to be believed, what influence public diversions have on the spirit and manners of a people. The Greeks wisely saw, this, and made a very serious affair of their public sports. For the same reason, it will, perhaps, seem worthy the care of our legislature to regulate the public diversions, by an absolute prohi bition of those which have a direct tendency to corrupt our morals,

1 These remarks are as just and applicable now as they were in 1721, when they were first pub lished. 2 Read Isaiah iii. 10-24.

as well as by a reformation of the drama; which, when rightly managed, is such a noble entertainment, and gave those fine lessons of morality and good sense to the Athenians of old, and to our British gentry above a century ago; but for these last ninety years, hath entertained us, for the most part, with such wretched things as spoil, instead of improving the taste and manners of the audience. Those who are attentive to such propositions only as may fill their pockets, will probably slight these things as trifles below the care of the legislature. But I am sure, all honest, thinking men must lament to see their country run headlong into all those luxurious follies, which, it is evident, have been fatal to other nations, and will undoubtedly prove fatal to us also, if a timely stop be not put to them.

ELIZABETH TOLLET. 1694-1754.

ELIZABETH TOLLET was the daughter of George Tollett, Esq., commissioner of the navy, in the reigns of King William and Queen Anne. In a short preface to a volume of her poems printed in 1755, she is mentioned as a woman of great virtue and excellent education. "Her poetry does not rise above mediocrity, and she shows most of the spirit and softness of her sex in the Winter Song."1

ON A DEATH'S-HEAD.

On this resemblance, where we find
A portrait drawn from all mankind,
Fond lover! gaze a while, to see
What Beauty's idol charms shall be.
Where are the balls that once could dart

Quick lightning through the wounded heart?

The skin, whose tint could once unite

The glowing red and polish'd white?
The lip in brighter ruby drest?

The cheek with dimpled smiles imprest?
The rising front, where beauty sate
Throned in her residence of state;
Which, half-disclosed and half-conceal'd,
The hair in flowing ringlets veil'd?
'Tis vanish'd all! remains alone
This eyeless scalp of naked bone:
The vacant orbits sunk within:
The jaw that offers at a grin.
Is this the object then that claims
The tribute of our youthful flames?
Must amorous hopes and fancied bliss,
Too dear delusions! end in this?

1 Southey's Specimens, ii. 193.

How high does Melancholy swell!
Which sighs can more than language tell:
Till Love can only grieve or fear,
Reflect a while, then drop a tear

For all that's beautiful or dear.

WINTER SONG.

Ask me no more, my truth to prove,
What I would suffer for my love:
With thee I would in exile go,
To regions of eternal snow:
O'er floods by solid ice confined;

Through forest bare with Northern wind:
While all around my eyes I cast,
Where all is wild, and all is waste.
If there the timorous stag you chase,
Or rouse to fight a fiercer race,
Undaunted I thy arms would bear,
And give thy hand the hunter's spear,
When the low sun withdraws his light,
And menaces a half year's night,
The conscious moon, and stars above,
Shall guide me with my wandering love.
Beneath the mountain's hollow brow,
Or in its rocky cells below,
Thy rural feast I would provide;
Nor envy palaces their pride;

The softest moss should dress thy bed,

With savage spoils about thee spread:

While faithful Love the watch should keep,
To banish danger from thy sleep.

WILLIAM COLLINS. 1720-1756.

WILLIAM COLLINS, one of the very finest of English lyric poets, was born at Chichester, in the year 1720, and was educated at Oxford. In 1744 he repaired to London as a literary adventurer. He won the cordial regard of Johnson, then a needy laborer in the same vocation, who, in his "Lives of the Poets," has spoken of him with tenderness. He tells us that "his appear ance was decent and manly, his knowledge considerable, his views exten sive, his conversation elegant, and his disposition cheerful. He designed many works, but his great fault was irresolution; or the frequent calls of im mediate necessity broke his scheme, and suffered him to pursue no settled purpose."

His odes were published on his own account in 1746; but being disappointed at the slowness of the sale, he is said to have burnt the copies that remained with his own hand. He was shortly relieved from his embarrass ments, by a legacy from an uncle of £2000: but worse evils than poverty soon

overclouded the rest of his life: he sunk gradually into a sort of melancholy, and died in 1756, in a state of helpless insanity.1

"The works of Collins," says Campbell, "will abide comparison with whatever Milton wrote under the age of thirty. If they have rather less exuberant wealth of genius, they have more exquisite touches of pathos. Like Milton, he leads us into the haunted ground of imagination: like him, he has the rich economy of expression haloed with thought, which by single or few words often hints entire pictures to the imagination. A cloud of obscurity sometimes rests on his highest conceptions, arising from the fineness of his associations, and the daring sweep of his allusions; but the shadow is tran sitory, and interferes very little with the light of his imagery or the warmth of his feelings. His genius loved to breathe rather in the preternatural and ideal element of poetry, than in the atmosphere of imitation, which lies closest to real life. He carried sensibility and tenderness into the highest regions of abstracted thought: his enthusiasm spreads a glow even amongst the shadowy tribes of mind; and his allegory is as sensible to the heart as it is visible to the fancy."2

ODE TO FEAR.3

Thou, to whom the world unknown,
With all its shadowy shapes, is shown,
Who seest appall'd the unreal scene,
While Fancy lifts the veil between:
Ah, Fear! ah, frantic Fear!

I see I see thee near.

I know thy hurried step, thy haggard eye!
Like thee I start, like thee disorder'd fly,
For, lo, what monsters in thy train appear!
Danger, whose limbs of giant mould
What mortal eye can fix'd behold?
Who stalks his round, a hideous form,
Howling amidst the midnight storm,

1 "In the year 1756 died our lamented Collins; one of our most exquisite poets, and of whom, pethaps, 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.”—Drake's Literary Hours.

"He had a wonderful combination of excellencies. United to splendor and sublimity of imagination, he had a richness of erudition, a keenness of research, a nicety of taste, and an elegance and truth of moral reflection, which astonished those who had the luck to be intimate with him."-Sir E. Brydges.

2 "Of all our minor poets, that is, those who have attempted only short pieces, Collins is probably the one who has shown most of the highest qualities of poetry, and who excites the most intense interest in the bosom of the reader. He soars into the regions of imagination, and occupies the highest peaks of Parnassus. His fancy is glowing and vivid, but at the same time hasty and obscure. He has the true inspiration of the poet. He heats and melts objects in the fervor of his genius, as iv a furnace."-Hazlitt.

* Collins, who had often determined to apply himself to dramatic poetry, seems here, with the same view, to have addressed one of the principal powers of the drama, and to implore that mighty influence she had given to the genius of Shakspeare. In the construction of this nervous ode he has shown equal power of judgment and imagination. Nothing can be more striking than the violent and abrupt abbreviation of the measure in the fifth and sixth verses, when the poet seems to feel the strong influence of the power he invokes:

"Ah, Fear-ah, frantic Fear!

I see-I see thee near."

Or throws him on the ridgy steep
Of some loose hanging rock to sleep:
And with him thousand phantoms join'd,
Who prompt to deeds accursed the mind:
And those, the fiends, who near allied,
O'er nature's wounds and wrecks preside;
While Vengeance, in the lurid air,
Lifts her red arm, exposed and bare:
On whom that ravening brood of fate,
Who lap the blood of Sorrow, wait;
Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see,
And look not madly wild, like thee?

EPODE.

In earliest Greece, to thee, with partial choice,
The grief-ful Muse addrest her infant tongue:
The maids and matrons, on her awful voice,
Silent and pale, in wild amazement hung.

Yet he, the Bard who first invoked thy name,
Disdain'd in Marathon its power to feel:

For not alone he nursed the poet's flame,
But reach'd from Virtue's hand the patriot's steel.

But who is he,2 whom later garlands grace,
Who left awhile o'er Hybla's3 dews to rove,
With trembling eyes thy dreary steps to trace,
Where thou and furies shared the baleful grove?

Wrapt in thy cloudy veil, th' incestuous Queen'
Sigh'd the sad call her son and husband heard,
When once alone it broke the silent scene,

And he, the wretch of Thebes, no more appear'd.

O Fear, I know thee by my throbbing heart,
Thy withering power inspired each mournful line,
Though gentle Pity claim her mingled part,

Yet all the thunders of the scene are thine.

ANTISTROPHE.

Thou who such weary lengths hast past,
Where wilt thou rest, mad nymph, at last?
Say, wilt thou shroud in haunted cell,

Where gloomy Rape and Murder dwell?
Or in some hollow'd seat,

'Gainst which the big waves beat,

1 The Greek tragic poet, Eschylus, who was in the battle of Marathon, between the Athenians and Persians, B. C. 490.

2 Sophocles, another Greek dramatic poet.

8 Hybla was a mountain in Sicily, famous for its honey and bees.

4 Jocasta, the queen of Thebes, who, after the death of her husband Laius, married her own son Edipus (whom Collins here calls the "wretch") without knowing who he was. On this story is founded that most sublime and pathetic tragedy, the "Edipus Tyrannus" of Sophocles.

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