used. Though the diction of 'The Seasons' is sometimes harsh and inharmonious, and sometimes turgid and obscure, and though in many instances the numbers are not sufficiently diversified by different pauses, yet is this poem on the whole, from the numberless strokes of nature in which it abounds, one of the most captivating and amusing in our language, and which, as its beauties are not of a transitory kind, as depending on particular customs and manners, will ever be perused with delight."-Joseph Warton, An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, Vol. I (1756).

"Did you never observe ('while rocking winds are piping loud') that pause, as the gust is recollecting itself, and rising upon the ear in a shrill and plaintive note, like the swell of an Eolian harp? I do assure you there is nothing in the world so like the voice of a spirit. Thomson had an ear sometimes; he was not deaf to this, and has described it gloriously, but gives it another different turn and of more horror. I cannot repeat the lines; it is in his 'Winter' [ll. 190-95 ?]."-Thomas Gray, in a letter to Stonehewer, June 29, 1760.

"The last piece that he lived to publish was 'The Castle of Indolence,' which was many years under his hand, but was at last finished with great accuracy. The first canto opens a scene of lazy luxury that fills the imagination."-Samuel Johnson, The Lives of the English Poets (1779-81).

EDWARD YOUNG

(197) LOVE OF FAME, THE UNIVERSAL PASSION.

(197) A Proper Idler. Satire IV. 67-86.

(198) 15. assembly: a social gathering. ¶17. ombre: a game at cards, in which two usually played against one.

(198) A Polite Worshipper. Satire VI. 21-36. ¶2. Drury Lane: Drury Lane Theatre, London.

(199) NIGHT THOUGHTS.

(199) Night, Sable Goddess.

Night I. 1-53. The poem was begun soon after Young

had lost his wife, and others dear to him, by death. (200) The Thief of Time. Night I. 370-97.

CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM

"Mr. Urban,-I doubt not but 'The Complaint' ["Night Thoughts"] and the author of it have raised your wonder. I think much more notice should have been taken of that excellent poem in your magazine. I am far from thinking myself fit to write encomiums upon it. I remember Alexander would be drawn by none but an Appelles, and carved only by a Phidias; and such a poem should be the subject of a sublime pen alone. . . . . I here make my offering: . . .

Thou awful, sacred bard, whoe'er thou art,
That thus enchantest with thy midnight songs,
And while enchanting dost instruct, accept
This just but slender tribute.

O how oft

Have grief and joy alternate heaved this breast,
And tears suffused my eyes, while o'er thy works
My soul intent has roved! And sacred all.

With thee my guide I 've ranged among the tombs,
Where Death in sable pomp erects her trophies,
Shunned as a gloomy place till now, but ah

Thy lamp has turned the darkness into day."

Marcus," in The Gentleman's Magazine, June, 1744.

"Dr. Young's description of night [p. 199] is beautiful in the highest degree, considered as a general description, and is equally so in whatever circumstances you suppose the writer to be. The images are strong, bold, and natural, whether they are put into the mouth of a murderer, a traveller, or a philosopher. It is not so with the celebrated speech of Macbeth [Macbeth, II. i. 49-56]; the chief beauty there arises from the peculiar circumstances of the

speaker at the time. . . . . I may therefore repeat, without injustice to Shakespear, that Dr. Young's description of night, considered merely as such, is much more natural and sublime than Shakespear's; and is not, I believe, to be equalled by any poet ancient or modern."—"H. L.," in The Gentleman's Magazine. February, 1774

ROBERT BLAIR

(201) THE GRAVE. Lines 1-27, 467-506. ¶ 1. affect choose.

(202) 28-67. Cf. Bryant's "Thanatopsis," which was written soon after reading "The Grave."

SAMUEL JOHNSON

(203) LONDON. Subtitle, "In Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal." Lines 1-18, 158-81. ¶7. Cambria's: "Cambria" was the Roman name for Wales. 8. St. David: the patron saint of Wales. ¶ 10. the Strand: a street in London; so called because it runs along the shore of the Thames.

(204) THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES. Subtitle, "In Imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal." Lines 1-20, 99-120, 191–222, 343–368. ¶21. Wolsey: Cardinal Wolsey (1471 ?1530), prime minister of Henry VIII; he lost the favor of the king at the end of a long period of service, was deprived of his offices, and retired to his diocese; he was arrested soon after on a charge of high treason, but on the way to the Tower he became ill and died in an abbey.

(205) 44. Swedish Charles: Charles XII of Sweden (1682-1718). He brilliantly repelled the joint attack of Denmark, Poland, and Russia upon Sweden, and then assumed the aggressive, winning many victories; but, invading Russia, his army suffered severely in the terrible winter of 1708-9, and was routed at the battle of Pultowa the next summer. Charles spent three years in Turkey, trying to induce the Sultan to make war upon Russia; failing, he returned to Sweden, made peace with Russia, and invaded Norway for purposes of conquest; here, at the siege of Fredrikshall, a fortress which was considered the key of Norway, he was killed by a musket ball; it was long suspected that he was killed by a traitor in his own ranks (cf. "dubious hand," 1. 72).

WILLIAM SHENSTONE

(206) THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. Stanzas 2, 3, 10, 16-23. "What particulars in Spenser were imagined most proper for the author's imitation on this occasion are his language, his simplicity, his manner of description, and a peculiar tenderness of sentiment remarkable throughout his works "-Prefatory "Advertisement." Shenstone's opinion of Spenser is expressed more fully in his Essays on Men and Manners, LIX: "The plan of Spenser's Fairy Queen appears to me very imperfect. His imagination, though very extensive, is yet somewhat less so, perhaps, than is generally allowed, if one considers the facility of realizing and equipping forth the virtues and vices. His metre has some advantages, though in many respects exceptionable. His good nature is visible through every part of his poem; his conjunction of the pagan and Christian scheme (as he introduces the deities of both acting simultaneously), wholly inexcusable. Much art and judgment are discoverable in parts, and but little in the whole. One may entertain some doubt whether the perusal of his monstrous descriptions be not as prejudicial to true taste as it is advantageous to the extent of imagination. Spenser, to be sure, expands the last; but, then, he expands it beyond its due limits. After all, there are many passages in his Fairy Queen which will be instances of a great and cultivated genius misapplied."

(207) 9. shent put to shame, blamed. ¶ 31. liefest-most beloved (O. E. "leof," beloved; from same root as "love").

(208) 41. 'frays=affrays, frightens. ¶43. quaint=crafty (from Latin "cognitus," from "cognoscere," to know, through Old French "cointe"). ¶47. Eftsoons=at once. ¶4852. "Horn-book. The alphabet-book, which was a thin board of oak about nine inches long and five or six wide, on which was printed the alphabet, the nine digits, and sometimes the Lord's Prayer. It had a handle, and was covered in front with a sheet of thin horn to prevent its being soiled; the back-board was ornamented with a rude sketch of St. George and the dragon."-Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. ¶53. thilk-that same (O.E. "bylc"). ¶57. the bard by Mulla's silver stream: Edmund Spenser (1552-99); the Mulla ran near his castle in Ireland, where he wrote most of his Faerie Queene. 59. Sighed as he sung: cf. The Faerie Queene, I. iii. st. 2:

And now it is empassioned so deepe

For fairest Unaes sake, of whom I sing,

That my frayle eies these lines with teares do steepe.

163. ermilinermine. 172. Cf. The Faerie Queene, I. iii. st. 1:

Feele my hart perst with so great agony,
When such I see, that all for pitty I could dy.

(209) 84. uncouth unusual (O.E. "uncud," unknown).

¶85. amain-strongly (liter

ally, "in might"; from "a," a reduced form of "on," and "main," from O.E. "mægen,' might). 98. cates=dainties (cf. "caterer").

CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM

....

"If the exploded words which render the English writers of Queen Elizabeth's days almost unintelligible to the present age are justly exploded, and totally disused in every other branch of literature, why, in the name of common sense, are they every now and then raised from the dead by our poets? Is the modern English, as it appears in the works of an Addison, a Swift, or a Bolingbroke, at all the worse for the want of such words as 'eftsoons,' 'wend,' 'rechless,' 'muchel,' 'eft,' 'erst,' and many thousands still more barbarous, and very justly condemned to those glossaries where they ought to rest in peace? If our authors would give us a good translation of Spenser's works into modern English, free from those unintelligible words and phrases which, to his misfortune, he was obliged to use, we are persuaded that admirable poet would be read by many who cannot endure the unpoetical harshness of his original language: nor indeed is his labored stanza at all agreeable to those who love ease in reading; it is mere slavery to many to preserve at once clear ideas of his sense and of the mechanism, order, and jingle of his versification and rhymes."-The Monthly Review, May, 1751. (The article is a review of an anonymous poem, "The Seasons," in imitation of Spenser: there is no reference to Shenstone by name.)

"The moral pieces have nothing in them very striking or remarkable, and might, perhaps, better have been omitted. We must, however, except the concluding poem of the 'Schoolmistress,' a piece universally and deservedly admired, and which is, to say the truth, fairly worth the whole collection. After the great and merited applause which Mr. Shenstone met with on account of this little imitation of Spenser, we are surprised to find nothing of the same nature occurring through all his works."-The Critical Review, May, 1764

WILLIAM COLLINS

Notes signed "C." are by Collins.

(209) ORIENTAL ECLOGUES. Eclogue the Second. "Mr. Collins wrote his eclogues when he was about seventeen years old, at Winchester school, and, as I well remember, had just been reading that volume of Salmon's Modern History which described Persia; which determined him to lay the scene of these pieces [there], as being productive of new images and sentiments. In his maturer years he was accustomed to speak very contemptuously of them,

calling them his Irish Eclogues, and saying they had not in them one spark of orientalism.”Joseph Warton, in his edition of Pope (1797).

(210) 14. Schiraz': Schiraz, formerly the capital of Persia, was a center of commerce. 38. "Thee" refers to "money" (l. 35) by a very abrupt change from the third person to the second; "only" goes with "thee." yet still, after all. 140. fond-foolish.

(211) 71. she: supply "whom" as the object of "won." 173. owned the pow'rful maid: i. e., acknowledged the power of the maid.

(212) AN EPISTLE. Lines 17-78. Sir Thomas Hanmer, who had been Speaker of the House of Commons, brought out an edition of Shakspere in 1743-44. 3. rage poetic frenzy. ¶6. Phaedra's tortured heart: the allusion is to Euripides' play of Hippolytus, in which Phaedra, wife of Theseus, is tortured by her love for Hippolytus, her stepson, which she is ashamed to confess. ¶ 7, 8. In a note Collins refers to the Edipus Rex of Sophocles: Edipus, King of Thebes, discovered that he had slain his father and married his mother; his mother hanged herself, and Edipus, after putting out his eyes, became a wanderer. ¶14. Menander's: Menander (342–291 B. C.), the most famous of the writers of the "New Comedy" of Greece, was the model of the Roman comic dramatists, Plautus and Terence, in the second century B. C. ¶ 17. Ilissus': the Ilissus flowed through Athens, the home of Greek tragedy. 19. As Arts expired: i. e., at the downfall of the Roman Empire. ¶ 21. Julius: Julius II, pope from 1503 to 1513, was a patron of art and literature; he laid the foundation stone of St. Peter's, and was a friend of Raphael and Michael Angelo. each exiled maid: the Muses. ¶ 22. Cosmo: Cosmo de' Medici (1389–1464), one of the merchant princes of the Medici family who ruled Florence for many generations, was a magnificent patron of literature and art. Etrurian shade: Florence, which is in old Etruria. 24. The soft Provençal: the troubadours of the south of France, who wrote in the Provençal tongue, were as a rule dependent for support upon the nobles whose courts they frequented; early in the thirteenth century many of them left southern France, then impoverished by the War of the Albigenses, and found a welcome in Italy. Arno's stream: Florence is on the river Arno. ¶ 25. wanton: the word here seems to combine the meanings of "sportive" and "loose." ¶ 26. love was all he sung: this is not wholly true; the poetry of the troubadours also included didactic poems and tales of battle and adventure. (213) 32. Tuscan: Florence is in Tuscany, which has nearly the same limits as old Etruria. 33. Eliza's: Elizabeth's. ¶39. Jonson: Ben Jonson (15737-1637), Shakspere's friend and fellow dramatist. 41. Fletcher: John Fletcher (1579-1625), who, partly in conjunction with Francis Beaumont, wrote many plays. ¶48. This curious verdict shows the survival of the Restoration ideals of gallantry and sentiment, which found Shakspere inferior to the more courtly Beaumont and Fletcher in the portrayal of woman and of man's relation to her. Yet the line should not be taken to mean that Shakspere had absolutely no feeling for woman, but only that his chief interest was in those "ruder passions" which are characteristic rather of men than of women and are the staple of great tragedy. ¶55. Corneille: the greatest of the French classic dramatists; he was born in 1606 and died in 1684. Lucan's spirit: Lucan, the Roman poet (39–65 A. D.), wrote the Pharsalia, an epic on the war between Cæsar and Pompey; his style is energetic and sometimes sublime, and had a strong influence upon the style of Corneille. ¶57. sweet Racine: Racine (1639-99), less bold and energetic than Corneille, was a more even and polished writer. 58. Maro's: Virgil's. chaster= more correct and refined in style; the comparison is with Lucan's style. ¶60. our poet's: Shakspere's. ¶62. truth: i. e., life-likeness. manners: i. e., modes of thought, action, and speech by which characters are revealed; a common use of the word then.

(213) A SONG FROM SHAKESPEAR'S "CYMBELINE." See Cymbeline, IV. ii. (214) ODE TO FEAR.

(215) 18. allied: i. e., to the phantoms of l. 16. ¶ 22. that rav'ning brood of Fate: "Alluding to the κúvas áþúkтous ["the hounds whom none may escape"] of Sophocles. See the Electra [1. 1388]."-C. ¶30. he: "Eschylus."-C. ¶31. Eschylus (525-456 B. C.) fought in the battles of Marathon, Salamis, and Platæa. ¶34. later garlands: Sophocles

was thirty years younger than Eschylus. ¶35. Hybla's dews: Hybla, a city of Sicily, was celebrated for the honey produced in its vicinity. Sophocles was called "the Attic bee" because of the pervading grace and sweetness of his art; the implication that he left his usual manner for a harsher one in Edipus Coloneus is not true. 37. baleful grove: the scene of the play is the entrance to a grove, at Colonus, dedicated to the Furies; here the wanderings and life of Edipus come to an end (see note on "An Epistle," ll. 7, 8, p. 470). ¶38. thy cloudy veil: the voice spoke from out a thunderstorm. queen: it was not Jocasta, the wife and mother of Edipus, but a god.

(216) 59. thrice-hallowed eve: Hallowe'en, when fairies, imps, and witches are supposed to be especially active. ¶ 70. cypress wreath: here used as the crown of a tragic poet. 71. Cf. Milton's "Il Penseroso," l. 176.

(216) ODE TO SIMPLICITY.

(217) 10. decent decorous, unpretentious. ¶ 11. Allic robe: cf. note on 1. 21. ¶ 14. Hybla's: see note on "Ode to Fear," 1. 35 (above). 16. her: the nightingale. ¶ 18. sweetly sad Electra's poet's ear: the allusion is to Sophocles, in whose Electra the title-character mourns for her murdered father, Agamemnon, saying that the plaintive nightingale is more pleasing to her than such as forget the death of their parents. ¶ 19. Cephisus: the largest river in Attica, flowing past Athens. ¶ 21. thy green retreat: Athens; the reference throughout stanzas 3 and 4 is to Greek literature, as without equal in simplicity. ¶23. died: when Alexander subjugated Greece, in 335 B. C. 32. virtue's: "virtue" here has its original meaning of "heroic manhood." ¶35. one distinguished throne: the throne of the Roman emperors, after the downfall of the republic. 137. hall.... bow'r: the great room and the private apartments of a castle. 41, 42. The thought is that the natural advantages of Italy cannot win back simplicity to her poetry while she lacks the more manly virtues.

(218) 48. meeting soul: cf. Milton's "L'Allegro," 1. 138, "Such as the meeting soul may pierce."

(218) ODE ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER. ¶I. As: the comparison runs through l. 16. regard attention. 3. Him: Spenser. ¶5-16. See The Faerie Queene, IV. v. st. 3. ¶8. love-darting eye: cf. Milton's Comus, l. 753, “Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn." 18. whom: Fancy. 19. cest-cestus, girdle. 23-40. "Probably the obscure idea that floated in the mind of the author was this, that true poetry, being a representation of nature, must have its archetype in those ideas of the Supreme Mind which originally gave birth to nature."-Mrs. Barbauld.

(219) 29. the loved enthusiast: Young Fancy (1. 17). ¶ 32. sapphire throne: the blue heavens; but they are the upper heavens, above the "tented sky" (1. 26) of this world. ¶ 39. rich-haired Youth of Morn: the sun. 40. subject-lying under. was: a grammatical error for "were." ¶46. tarsel's: the tarsel is the male falcon. ¶ 54. This hallowed work: the cestus; cf. ll. 17-21. ¶55-62. The cliff is a symbol of Milton's poetry, and even the details are symbolic; see especially ll. 56, 58, 59, 62. ¶ 57. jealous steep: i. e., a steep difficult of approach. 63. that oak: an allusion to Milton's "Il Penseroso," ll. 59, 60:

While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke

Gently o'er th' accustomed oak.

(220) 66. sphered in heav'n: i. e., in one of the spheres in which the heavenly bodies, according to the Ptolemaic astronomy, are fixed. ¶69. Waller's myrtle shades: the best poems of Edmund Waller (1605-1687) are his love poems, which in Collins' day were highly esteemed for their sweetness of versification; the myrtle was sacred to Venus. ¶ 72. one alone: Milton; cf. 1. 5.

(220) ODE WRITTEN In the Beginning of the YEAR 1746. At the battle of Fontenoy, May 11, 1745, in the War of the Austrian Succession, the English soldiers with dogged courage exposed themselves to a terrible fire, and their column was torn in pieces. At Preston Pans, September 21, 1745, and at Falkirk, January 17, 1746, the English troops were defeated by