brilliant prospects of our existence !--Poetry, by which is communicated the most intense pleasure to the most intellectual and highest qualities of our being!

But these unfavourable opinions

have been encouraged, and if not justified rendered more plausible, by the dull and absurd doctrines of mechanical critics, who lowering the divine Art to petty artifices, such as their own plodding perceptions can reach, have too often brought into temporary fashion the mere puerilities of a minor ingenuity wasted upon tinsel attempts to shine.

Nature speaks alike in every age; and Poetry, like wisdom, is the eternal voice of Truth. To attempt to attract by mere novelty, is to rest on that which, from its very essence, is of the most transient date. How mighty and distinguished is the task of painting in power

ful and harmonious language, those intellectual and material associations, which

are more numerous and more brilliant in individuals, in proportion to their mental and moral gifts! The whimsical combinations of a mind, diverted out of the ordinary course of human pursuits and human feelings, may convey an affected or a momentary impulse to a taste too sluggish to be touched by the simplicity of Nature: but they will soon be deserted for some new toy, which in its turn will nauseate and be thrown away. We have seen that COWLEY'S genius could not give a lasting attraction to his efforts, when thus misapplied. And how many a meteor has since been more justly consigned to a similar fate!

The charms of Nature, the permanent and general feelings of humanity, are themes which will never be exhaust

ed: and will never cease to instruct and delight. Look at those passages in the Ancients, which have been on the lips of all ages, and yet please as intensely as when they were first composed! They deal in no ambitious ornaments; they affect no surprising combinations; they illustrate by no far-fetched and surprising image; but they charm by the simplicity and clearness of energetic truth; they affect by echoing the natural emotions of every pure and virtuous bosom; and they astonish by the inimitable faithfulness and nicety, with which they represent the shadowy figures that play before every fancy.

Take, for instance, the celebrated

passage

from VIRGIL'S Georgics,' which has been cited, and translated, and imitated a thousand times.

than two or three stanzas, by way of recalling the reader's recollection to the tone of his astonishing conceptions, and language.

He thus commences the description of the imaginary Beings, that sat within the Porch of Hell.

"AND, first, within the porch and jaws of hell,
Sat deep Remorse of Conscience, all besprent
With tears; and to herself oft would she tell
Her wretchedness, and, cursing, never stent
To sob and sigh, but ever thus lament

With thoughtful care; as she that, all in vain,
Would wear and waste continually in pain:

Her eyes unstedfast, rolling here and there,

Whirl'd on each place, as place that vengeance brought, So was her mind continually in fear,

Tost and tormented with the tedious thought

Of those detested crimes which she had wrought;
With dreadful cheer, and looks thrown to the sky,
Wishing for death, and yet she could not die.

Next, saw we Dread, all trembling how he shook,
With foot uncertain, profer'd here and there;
Benumb'd with speech; and, with a ghastly look,
Search'd every place, all pale and dead for fear,
His cap borne up with staring of his hair;

'Stoin'd and amaz'd at his own shade for dread, And fearing greater dangers than was need.

And, next, within the entry of this lake,
Sat fell Revenge, gnashing her teeth for ire;
Devising means how she may vengeance take;
Never in rest, 'till she have her desire;
But frets within so far forth with the fire
Of wreaking flames, that now determines she
To die by death, or 'veng'd by death to be.

When fell Revenge, with bloody foul pretence,
Had show'd herself, as next in order set,
With trembling limbs we softly parted thence,
'Till in our eyes another sight we met;
When fro my heart a sigh forthwith I fet,
Ruing, alas! upon the woeful plight
Of Misery, that next appear'd in sight:

His face was lean, and some-deal pin'd away,
And eke his hands consumed to the bone;
But, what his body was, I cannot say,
For on his carcase raiment he had none,
Save clouts and patches pieced one by one;
With staff in hand, and scrip on shoulders cast;
His chief defence against the Winter's blast:

His food, for most, was wild fruits of the tree,
Unless sometime some crums fell to his share,
Which in his wallet long, God wot, kept he,
As on the which full daint'ly would he fare;
His drink, the running stream; his cup, the bare