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nowned Grecian or Roman which antiquity can produce. The modern ode and the fong are in general diftinguishable by their fubject, by the different degree of elevation and ornament in the language, and by a greater length and irregularity in the measure of the former, which is not adapted to vocal mufic. Yet as these distinctions are rather relative than abfolute, it is easy to see that they may approach each others limits fo as to render it dubious under which class they range, which would be the cafe with many of Horace's odes if converted to English poems.

WE are now prepared to make use of the general deduction of the progrefs of the mind through the different ftages of poetical compofition, formerly attempted, in forming an arrangement of fongs into a

few diftinct claffes.

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THE

THE rude original paftoral poetry of our country furnishes the first class in the popular pieces called ballads. These confift of the village tale, the dialogue of ruftic courtship, the description of natural objects, and the incidents of a rural life. Their language is the language of nature, fimple and unadorned; their story is not the wild offspring of fancy, but the probable adventure of the cottage; and their fentiments are the unftudied expreffions of paffions and emotions common to all mankind.

NATURE, farther refined, but ftill nature, gives the second clafs of pieces containing the fentimental part of the former, abstracted from the tale and rural landfcape, and improved by a more studied obfervation of the internal feelings of paffion and their external fymptoms. It is the natural philofophy of the mind, and

the

the description of fenfations. Here love appears in all its various forms of defire, doubt, jealousy, hope, despair; and fuggefts a language, rich, ftrong, and figurative. This is what may ftrictly be called the pathetic in poetry.

THE third clafs is formed upon an artificial turn of thinking, and the operation of the fancy. Here the fentiments arife from cool reflexion and curious fpeculation, rather than from a prefent emotion. They accordingly require enlivening by ingenious comparison, ftriking contraft, unexpected turns, a climax finishing in a point, and all the pleafing refinements of art which give the denomination of ingenious and witty to our conceptions. Some effential diftinctions will appear in this clafs arifing from the various kinds of wit; but they all agree in the circumftance of springing rather from fancy than paffion, and confequently

B4

fequently of exciting pleasure and furprize rather than the sympathetic emotions.

It is obfervable that it is this clafs alone which answers the idea Mr. Phillips gives of fong-writing in his little essay; and hence he has been betrayed into a little inconfiftency; for while he compares fong-writing in general to the gay and amorous fpecies of antient Lyric poetry, he refers us to the French fongs as examples of perfection, which are almoft folely of the witty and ingenious kind, and totally different from most of the remains of antiquity. In particular the little epigrammatic fong which he there cites and tranflates, is fo entirely diffimilar to the celebrated piece of Sappho which he has fo happily made his own, that it is wonderful the diftinction did not ftrike him.

I SHALL juft farther remark with regard

to

to the propofed arrangement of our collection, that when genius is left to itself without fixed laws to conduct it, each different fpecies of writing is fo apt by imperceptible gradations to flide into the next in kindred, that it is frequently impoffible for the critic to preferve his claffes pure and free from mixture, without a too fcrupulous rejection of pieces really beautiful though somewhat faulty in regularity. The reader will easily perceive, and I hope make proper allowances for feveral inftances of equivocal arrangement, which from this cause I have not been able to avoid.

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