only in one form, it was familiarized to the ear by custom; but where it was obliged to affume the different fhapes of the lyric mufe, it seemed ftill a ftranger of uncouth figure, was received rather with curiosity than pleafure, and entertained without that eafe, or fatisfaction, which acquaintance and familiarity produce-Moreover, the heroic blank verfe obtained a fanction of infinite importance to its general reception, when it was adopted by one of the greatest poets the world ever produced, and was made the vehicle of the nobleft poem that ever was written. When this poem at length extorted that applause which ignorance and prejudice had united to withold, the verfification foon found its imitators, and became more generally fuccessful than even in thofe countries from whence it was imported. But lyric blank verfe has met

with no fuch advantages; for Mr. Collins, whofe genius and judgment in harmony might have given it so powerful an effect, has left us but one fpecimen of it in the Ode to Evening.

IN the choice of his measure he seems to have had in his eye Horace's ode to Pyrrha ; for this ode bears the nearest resemblance to that mixt kind of the afclepiad and pherẹcratic verfe; and that refemblance in fome degree reconciles us to the want of thyme, while it reminds us of thofe great mafters of antiquity, whose works had no need of this whimsical jingle of founds.

FROM the following paffage one might be induced to think that the poet had it in view to render his fubject and his verfification fuitable to each other on this occafion, and that, when he addreffed himfelf to the fober

power

power of evening, he had thought proper to lay afide the foppery of rhyme;

Now teach me, Maid compos'd,

To breathe fome foften'd ftrain,

Whofe numbers ftealing thro' thy darkning

vale,

May not unfeemly with its fillness fuit ;

As, mufing flow, I hail

Thy genial, lov'd return!

But whatever were the numbers, or the verfification of this ode, the imagery and enthufiafm it contains could not fail of rendering it delightful. No other of Mr. Collins's odes is more generally characteristic of his genius. In one place we difcover his paffion for vifionary beings:

For

For when thy folding ftar arifing fhews
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant Hours, and Elves
Who flept in buds the day,

And many a nymph, who wreaths her brows with fedge,

And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier ftill,

The penfive pleasures fweet
Prepare thy fhadowy car.

In another we behold his ftrong bias to melancholy :

Then let me rove fome wild and heathy

fcene,

Or find some ruin 'midst its dreary dells,
Whose walls more awful nod

By thy religious gleams.

Then appears his tafte for what is wildly grand and magnificent in nature; when, pre

vented

vented by ftorms from enjoying his evening

walk, he wishes for a fituation,

That from the mountain's fide,

Views wilds and swelling floods.

and, through the whole, his invariable attachment to the expreffion of painting:

and marks o'er all

Thy dewy fingers draw

The gradual, dusky veil.

It might be a fufficient encomium on this beautiful ode to obferve, that it has been particularly admired by a lady to whom Nature has given the most perfect principles of tafte. She has not even complained of the want of rhyme in it, a circumftance by no means unfavourable to the cause of lyric blank verfe; for surely, if a fair reader can endure an ode without bells and chimes, the mafcu. line genius may difpenfe with them.

THE