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That blood which thou and thy great grand-
fire fhed,

And all that since these fifter-nations bled,
Had been unfpilt, and happy Edward known,
That all the blood he fpilt had been his own.

The writer, who quits his fubject for heterogeneous, or unnatural digreffion, discovers no great judgment. As Cooper's-Hill affords a fight of Windfor, there could be no impropriety in paying Windfor fome attention; to proceed to the hiftory of a king who was born there, was rather too wide a deviation; but to descant on that king's inftitution of an order of knighthood,* must be an unpardonable eccentricity. Our author on this occafion talks of a personage whom Edward chofe for a patron, and who was a foldier and a martyr; this we guess to be the English tutelar Saint George. He next fpeaks of another, of whom Edward feemed to foretell and prophesy, who joined an azure round to

The Garter.

his

his realms the party meant by this defcription, is not fo eafily afcertained. Laftly, he gives us a wonderful subject of contemplation, an endless bound with liquid arms, which extend to the world's extremeft ends:

When he that patron chofe in whom are join'd,
Soldier and martyr, and his arms confin'd
Within the azure circle, he did seem

But to foretell and prophesy of him,

Who to his realms that azure round hath join'd,
Which nature for their bound at firft defign'd;
That bound which to the world's extremeft ends,
Endlefs itself, its liquid arms extends.

In a Descriptive Poem, the proper names of places are abfolutely neceffary, for the fake of perfpicuity; and if judiciously chofen and employed, they always afford pleasure. Denham feems to have been greatly averfe to the use of them, The early éditions of his poem inforty us in a note, that the following lines late to Chertfy-Abbey, otherwile it would be rather difficult to guess their intended

intended application. Perhaps it is not poffible for any thing that bears the name of verses, to be more profaic than these :

My fixed thoughts my wandering eye betrays,
Viewing a neighbouring hill, whose top so late
A chapel crown'd, 'till in the common fate
The adjoining Abbey fell, (may no fuch storm
Fall on our time, where ruin muft reform!)

Pope's definition of poetry, when he mifnamed it wit, is probably at once the most concife and most just ever given:

True wit is nature to advantage dreft,
What oft was thought, but ne'er fo well exprest.

Denham, and his cotemporaries, on the contrary, seem to have imagined all merit to confift in thinking differently from others, and in collecting uncommon, or remote and fanciful refemblances. This merit, however, must suffer fome degradation, when it is confidered as often actually in poffeffion of the lowest vulgar, of the plough-boy, the

waterman, and the cinder wench.* Our author, from the foregoing quotation, where he oddly intitles the reformation a ftorm, takes occafion to defcant on that storm, in forty lines, fraught with fimile and antithefis. Religion is here compared to a block and a stork, the frigid and torrid zones, a lethargy, and a calenture. The reader will probably be fatisfied with the laft four couplets:

Who fees these difmal heaps, but would de-
mand,

What barbarous invader fack'd the land?
But when he hears no Goth, no Turk did
bring

This defolation, but a Chriftian king;

When nothing but the name of zeal || appears, 'Twixt our beft actions, and the worst of

theirs ;

* Shakespeare knew this; his clowns and other low characters often say very fine things; witness Ancient Pistol, when he compares Falstaff's belly to a dunghill.

|| Propriety of fentiment is wanting here.-Zeal was the motive of the Mahometan depredations, as well as of Henry's,

What

What does he think our facrilege would spare,
When fuch the effects of our devotions are?

We are now come to a very important part of the poem ; the description of the Thames. The author one fhould here expect would have painted, as nearly as poffible, the appearance of a fine river, amidst a beautiful region of hills, woods, and vallies. Inftead of this, we are prefented with a tedious enumeration of fuppofed qualities, illuftrated by a ftring of far fetched and unnatural comparifons. Thames the river god, or allegorical perfon, and Thames the current of water, are perpetually confounded together. The river god is represented as a ftrange figure, with a wing, fitting like a hen to hatch plenty; and afterwards as finding wealth where it is, bestowing it where it is wanted; planting cities in defarts, and woods in cities :

My eye descending from the hill furveys,
Where Thames among the wanton vallies strays;
Thames!

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