knowledge was nonsense; that sentiment was weakness; and imagination folly. After all, perhaps, these perversities were incurable, and may have arisen from mental disease: for candour may plead that they were the incipient operations of that melancholy insanity, of which the last paroxisms terminated his life in a few weeks.

The poetical antiquities of Scotland owe much to the late Lord Hailes, to Mr. Pinkerton, Mr. George Chalmers, Mr. Sibbald; and to the copious genins, as well as sagacious industry and knowledge, of Mr. Walter Scott, and scarcely less to the late lamented and delightful author Dr. John Leyden.

INTRODUCTION TO VOL. I.

ERHAPS such Miscellanies, as 'Davison's Rhapsody,' are better evidence of the popu

lar taste in poetry, which prevailed when they were first published, than the work of any single author, however eminent. Almost all the pieces of the present Collection partake more of a moral, than a picturesque or romantic cast. They seem to be, for the most part, the intellectual amusements of men engaged in busy life, who occasionally vented the reflections they had gathered, through the vehicle of metre.

In SIR JOHN DAVIES there is great subtlety of thought, and admirable perspicuity and terseness of language; but he deals rather in the efforts of the head, than of the heart or the fancy. The

Ten Sonnets, which on the authority of the initials are ascribed to him, were perhaps JOHN DONNE'S, or some other poet's: they partake too much of the character of the Italian conceit, to authorize us to ascribe them, with any confidence, to this strong-minded Lawyer.

There is more of poetry in some of the Lyrical Pieces; especially those of THOMAS CAMPION, and the three valuable Pastorals of the COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE, and her brother SIR PHILIP Sydney.

The Sonnets of THOMAS WATSON are all to be found in his 'Hecatompathia,' and have been fully criticized in the 'British Bibliographer.' They are too full of all the faults, without any of the merits, of the Petrarchian school, to be the favourites of a pure and natural

taste.

There prevailed at this period a pe

culiar species of Pastoral Song, of which the happier productions exhibit an exquisite naivetè and simplicity that has never since been reached, or even attempted. Of this a very charming spemen is to be found at p. 17, in the Fiction, beginning

"It chanc'd of late a Shepherd's swain."

I suspect, for reasons which hereafter I may dilate upon, that this beautiful poem was SIR WALTER RALEIGH's: G. Ellis, however, has printed it in his third vol. p. 17, as FRANCIS DAVISON's; whose right to it, I think, I shall be able satisfactorily to disprove. I do not think that I can fix upon any thing in all "Davison's Rhapsody" equal to this.

a

Ellis justly observes that "the ly

a In "Dryden's Miscellany," iv. 247, it is ascribed to SYDNEY GODOLPHIN; who was not born when it was first published.