zas, or returning measures, which are usually called songs, though, perhaps, they may never be set to music. It is remarkable, that in twenty-eight actual songs, set by the most eminent masters, he has scarcely given one worth reading. But some really good ones are interspersed in his works, which may serve to give you a taste of this pleasing species of composition. The piece beginning "The merchant to secure his treasure" ingeniously compares the different appearances of real and of pretended love. "If wine and music have the power," is a poetical ode upon the Horatian model. Pathetic tenderness characterizes the two short pieces of which the first lines are "Yes, fairest proof of beauty's power," and "In vain you tell your parting lover." That entitled "Phillis's Age" is an example of the witty and satirical manner. The "Despairing Shepherd" beautifully paints that pure and exalted passion which is the soul of romance. When love of this kind was in credit, " He bow'd, obey'd, and died," must have been the very perfection of amorous allegiance. In "The Garland," a touching moral is deduced with great elegance from a circumstance well adapted to poetical description. The " Lady's Looking-glass" may rank with this in subject, though not written in stanzas. "The female Phaeton" is a piece of great sprightliness, wrought to an epigrammatic point, founded, like Waller's Phœbus and Daphne, upon a classical allusion. The extravagance of " set the world on fire" would be admired at a time when men of wit and gallantry thought they could not go too far in complimenting a lady. Among the pieces called ballads, by which were meant a species of narrative songs in a familiar and humourous. style, you will be amused with "DownHall," and "The Thief and Cordelier." It is mortifying that the talent for which Prior is particularly famous, that of telling a story with ease and pleasantry, should have been exercised upon such topics as absolutely to preclude a young lady from enjoying it. I can only venture to give you a taste of his manner by " the English Padlock," which is written with his characteristic vivacity, and contains a very good moral. You cannot at present be prepared to relish his comico-philosophical poem of "Alma;" and I think we have already dwelt long enough upon the works of an author, whose beauties are of a kind not the most favourable to the formation of a correct taste. Adieu! LETTER V. We will next, my dear Mary, turn to an author, one of whose praises it is, never to have written "a line which, dying, he would wish to blot"-the moral and elegant ADDISON. He ranks, indeed, much higher as a writer of prose than of verse, yet he first came into notice for his talents in the latter capacity. He had the fortune to live at a time when the union of poetry with loyalty bore a high value, and his praises of William and Marlborough were rewarded with pensions and public employments. The subjects of these pieces probably will not much recommend them to you; yet the second, entitled "The Campaign," retains considerable celebrity among poems of its class. It is composed with care, and supports an uniform and polished dignity: several of its passages even rise to a degree of sublimity. The simile of the destroying angel, to whom Marlborough at the battle of Blenheim is compared, has been much admired: So when an angel by divine command An objection has been made against this simile, that it too nearly resembles the primary object; for the Angel and Marlborough are both represented as performing a task of destruction under the command of a superior, and both are rational beings exerting similar mental qualities. But if this circumstance be a deduction from the ingenuity of the thought, it is none from its grandeur, or from the value of the parallel as enhancing the idea of the poet's hero. No greater conception of a chief in battle can be formed, than that of a superior being, in tranquil security, directing |