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and lovely. With the charming image of this ideal excellence in their minds, the poets of Greece and Rome felected every pleafing object from the whole compass of nature, and carefully feparated them from every thing difguftful and incongruous. From a croud of furrounding images they knew how to choose fuch as were not only intrinfically beautiful, but fuitable to their fubject; and they knew when to drop all ornament, and recur to fimple nature. They diftinguished with the niceft judg ment between the purposes of elevating the fancy, and interefting the heart, and could give full force to each, without confounding and mixing their effects.

In the fpecies of Lyric poetry which we are now to confider, both these designs have their place. The poetical defcription of a fair form requires the comparison of every kindred object of delight, and the richeft

richest colouring that art can bestow. The expreffion of emotions, on the other hand, must be conducted upon a fimple plan; the feelings of the foul muft declare themfelves in artless touches of nature and the real fymptoms of paffion; and the poet's hand must only appear in the delicacy of his strokes, and the foftness and harmony of his verfification.

SAPPHO, the genuine favourite of Venus, has given us a perfect model of the paffionate fong. She poured forth her whole foul in those amorous odes, of which time has indeed left us very fcanty remains, but fuch as will ever be the finest examples of elegance and fenfibility. The joyous Anacreon fucceeded, but with a different turn of fentiment. His lyre was tuned rather to gaiety than tenderness, and his Venus was rather the eafy companion of a bacchanalian, than the object of delicate

and

In Horace, the

His

and refined emotions. paffionate warmth of Sappho, the easy gaiety of Anacreon, and a superior strain of fancy and poetical enthufiafm proper to himself, are united; but on the whole, he is lefs frequently tender, than gay, or fublime. Among the Romans, the elegiac poets chiefly excelled in the natural and fimple pathetic, and Tibullus is the purest example of this kind of writing. flowing, elegant, and unadorned style, fweetly correfponds with the tender fentiments of complaining love, and fome of the most affecting touches of nature that ever were expreffed, have dropt from his pen. Ovid, though thoroughly acquainted with the paffion of love, and abounding with warm and natural descriptions of it, was in general too much under the dominion of a lively fancy, and too fond of brilliant expreffion, to be long a pathetic writer. If he had compofed in the Lyric

form,

form, his pieces would have resembled our next clafs of witty and ingenious fongs, more nearly than thofe of any antient Lyric poet.

THE following fongs of the paffionate and defcriptive kind, resemble in various degrees the antient mafters above-mentioned.

THERE are many imitations of the Sapphic ode, in its warm defcriptions of the external symptoms of love. Befides that piece of Dr. Smollet's, which is only a variation of Sappho's famous ode, I would particularly point out

"Ah the fhepherd's mournful fate"

as a near copy from this model.

HORACE, a poet the most familiar to a fcholar of all the antients, has been imi

tated

tated in feveral fongs. These are such as in common language would be peculiarly entitled odes, from their high ftrain of fancy and poetical diction. That of Prior,

"If wine and mufic have the power"

may be marked as truly Horatian.

THE fimple pathetic of Tibullus and the writers of elegy, is moft fweetly manifested in that charming fong of Dr. Percy's,

"O Nancy wilt thou go with me

which has scarcely its equal for real tenderness in this or any other language.

OTHER resemblances might be pointed out, but I imagine it is unneceffary to go farther. What has been already obferved may serve to put a reader of tafte upon remarking thofe niceties of compofition,

and

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