Ir feems to have been the whole industry of our author (and it is, at the fame time, almost all the claim to moral excellence his writings can boast) to promote the influence of the focial virtues, by painting them in the fairest and happieft lights.

Melior fieri tuendo,

would be no improper motto to his poems in general, but of his lyric poems it seems to be the whole moral tendency and effect. If, therefore, it should appear to fome readers that he has been more induftrious to cultivate description than fentiment; it may be observed that his defcriptions themselves are fentimental, and answer the whole end of that fpecies of writing, by embellishing every feature of virtue, and by conveying, through the effects of the pencil, the finest moral leffons to the mind.

HORA CA

HORACE fpeaks of the fidelity of the ear in preference to the uncertainty of the eye; but if the mind receives conviction, it is, certainly, of very little importance through what medium, or by which of the fenfes it is conveyed. The impreffions left on the imagination may, poffibly, be thought lefs durable than the depofits of the memory, but it may very well admit of a question whether a conclufion of reason, or an impreffion of imagination will fooneft make its way to the heart. A moral precept conveyed in words is only an account rath in its effects; a moral picture is truth exemplified; and which is most likely to gain upon the affections, it may not be difficult to determine.

THIS, however, muft be allowed, that those works approach the nearest to perfection which

which unite these powers and advantages; which at once influence the imagination, and engage the memory; the former by the force of animated, and ftriking defcription, the latter by a brief but harmonious conveyance of precept: thus, while the heart is influenced through the operation of the passions, or the fancy, the effect, which might otherwise have been tranfient, is fecured by the cooperating power of the memory, which treasures up in a fhort aphorifm the moral of the scene.

THIS is a good reason, and this, perhaps, is the only reason that can be given why our dramatic performances fhould generally end with a chain of couplets. In these the moral of the whole piece is usually conveyed, and that affiftance which the memory borrows from rhyme, as it was probably the original caufe

3

4

cause of it, gives it usefulness and propriety

even there.

AFTER thefe apologies for the descriptive turn of the following odes, fomething remains to be faid on the origin and use of allegory in poetical compofition.

By this we are not to understand the trope in the fchools, which is defined aliud verbis, aliud fenfu oftendere, and of which Quintilian fays, Ufus eft, ut triftia dicamus melioribus ver bis, aut bonæ rei gratia quædam contrariis fignificemus, &c. It is not the verbal, but the fentimental allegory, not allegorical expreffion (which, indeed, might come under the term of metaphor) but allegorical imagery, that is here in question.

WHEN We endeavour to trace this fpecies of figurative fentiment to its origin, we find

it

it coeval with literature itself. It is generally agreed that the most ancient productions are poetical, and it is certain that the most ancient poems abound with allegorical imagery.

IF, then, it be allowed that the firft literary productions were poetical, we shall have little or no difficulty in difcovering the origin of allegory.

AT the birth of letters, in the tranfition from hieroglyphical to literal expreffion, it is not to be wondered if the cuftom of expreffing ideas by personal images, which had fo long prevailed, fhould ftill retain its influence on the mind, though the use of letters had rendered the practical application of it fuperfluous. Those who had been accustomed to exprefs ftrength by the image of an elephant, fwiftness by that of a panther, and courage by

that