To the Memory of WILLIAM SHENSTONE, Eq. OME, fhepherds, we'll follow the hearfe, COM And fee our lov'd CORY DON laid: Tho' forrow may blemish the verse, Yet let the fad tribute be paid. The graces that glow'd in his mind. On purpose he planted yon trees, That birds in the covert might dwell; Ye lambkins that play'd at his feet, His manners as mild as your own, No verdure fhall cover the vale, Since he that fhould welcome the spring, His PHYLLIS was fond of his praise, But which of them equall'd his fong? And thus-let me break it in twain. CUNNINGHAM. III. ESSAY ON PASSIONATE AND DESCRIPTIVE SONG S. HE poet's rapturous defcriptions of TH beauty, with the expreffion of his warm fenfations and emotions, are the fubjects of this clafs of fong-writing. Irs models exift in the claffical remains of Lyric poetry, and all the praise the moderns can here expect, muft arise from imitating with fuccefs thefe examples of perfection. THE fublime and beautiful of nature, were first combined with the elegance and refinement of art, by the Grecians: and this fuperiority in their poetry, and the other fine arts, entitled them to distinguish the reft of the world from themselves, as Barbarians. Their Roman conquerors, first by their arms, and then by their borrowed arts, obtained a fhare in the honourable exclufion. Among thefe people, even fimple nature was graceful, and ornament was elegant and magnificent. Glaring fplendor reigned in the East, and terrible fublimity in the North, but grace and dignity belonged to Greece and Rome alone. Fancy, in her wildest flights, could in them restrain herself within the limits of harmony harmony and proportion. Even fuperftition here wore a graceful afpect. While the Deities of other nations were present to their minds in the horrid forms of cruel rage and gigantic deformity, they gave divinity to the fublime and beautiful conceptions of their poets and painters. These they embodied with suitable symbols and attributes; and the enthufiaftic votary worshipped the God of his own enraptured imagination. There is no circumftance in which the genius of thefe people fhows itself more ftrongly than in the character of these fancy-formed divinities. Befides those particularly diftinguished by the title of the Graces, there were many whofe attributes expreffed the different fhades and variations of whatever is elegant and graceful. Their Venus was the abftract idea of all thefe united-fhe was grace and beauty itself, and parent of every thing lætum et amabile-gladfome and |