Als by her side in richest robes array'd, An eunuch sate, of visage pale and dead, Unseemly paramour for royal maid ! Yet him she courted oft and honoured, And oft would by her place in princely sted, Though from the dregs of earth he springen were, And oft with regal crowns she deck'd his head, And oft, to sooth her vain and foolish ear, She bade him the great names of mighty Kesars bear.

Thereto herself a pompous title bore,

For she was vain of her great ancestry,
But vainer still of that prodigious store
Of arts and learning, which she vaunts to lie
In the rich archives of her treasury.
These she to strangers oftentimes would show,
With grave demean and solemn vanity,
Then proudly claim as to her merit due,
The venerable praise and title of Vertù.

Vertù she was yclept, and held her court
With outward shows of pomp and majesty,
To which natheless few others did resort,
But men of base and vulgar industry.,
Or such perdy as of them cozen'd be,

Mimes, fiddlers, pipers, eunuchs squeaking fine, Painters and builders, sons of masonry, Who well could measure with the rule and line, And all the orders five right craftily define.

But other skill of cunning architect, How to contrive the house for dwelling best, With self-sufficient scorn they wont neglect, As corresponding with their purpose least; And herein be they copied of the rest, Who aye pretending love of science fair, And generous purpose to adorn the breast With liberal arts, to Vertù's court repair, Yet nought but tunes and names and coins away do bear.

For long, to visit her once-honour'd seat The studious sons of learning have forbore: Who whilom thither ran with pilgrim feet, Her venerable reliques to adore,

And load their bosom with the sacred store, Whereof the world large treasure yet enjoys. But sithence she declined from wisdom's lore, They left her to display her pompous toys To virtuosi vain and wonder-gaping boys.

COLLINS published his Oriental Eclogues while at college, and his lyrical poetry at the age of twenty-six. Those works will abide comparison with whatever Milton wrote under the age of thirty. If they have rather less exuberant wealth of genius, they exhibit more exquisite touches of pathos. Like Milton, he leads us into the haunted ground of imagination; like him, he has the rich economy of expression haloed with thought, which by single or few words often hints entire pictures to the imagination. In what short and simple terms, for instance, does he open a wide and majestic landscape to the mind, such as we might view from Benlomond or Snowden, when he speaks of the hut

"That from the mountain's side

Views wilds and swelling floods."

And in the line "Where faint and sickly winds for ever howl around," he does not merely seem to describe the sultry desert, but brings it home to the senses.

A cloud of obscurity sometimes rests on his highest conceptions, arising from the fineness of his associations, and the daring sweep of his allusions; but the shadow is transitory, and interferes very little with the light of his imagery, or the warmth of his feelings. The absence of even this speck of mysticism from his Ode on the Passions is perhaps the happy circumstance

that secured its unbounded popularity. Nothing is common-place in Collins. The pastoral eclogue, which is insipid in all other English hands, assumes in his a touching interest, and a picturesque air of novelty. It seems that he himself ultimately undervalued those eclogues, as deficient in characteristic manners; but surely no just reader of them cares any more about this circumstance than about the authenticity of the tale of Troy*.

In his Ode to Fear he hints at his dramatic ambition, and he planned several tragedies. Had he lived to enjoy and adorn existence, it is not easy to conceive his sensitive spirit and harmonious ear descending to mediocrity in any path of poetry; yet it may be doubted if his mind had not a passion for the visionary and remote forms of imagination too strong and exclusive for the general purposes of the drama. His genius loved to breathe rather in the preternatural and ideal element of poetry, than in the atmosphere of

[*"These eclogues by Mr. Collins," says Goldsmith, "are very pretty: the images, it must be owned, are not very local; for the pastoral subject could not well admit of it. The description of Asiatic magnificence and manners is a subject as yet unattempted amongst us, and, I believe capable of furnishing a great variety of poetical imagery.” Of eastern imagery our poetry is now nearly stuffed fullthanks to Collins, Sir William Jones, Mr. Southey, and Mr. Moore.]

imitation, which lies closest to real life; and his notions of poetical excellence, whatever vows he might address to the manners, were still tending to the vast, the undefinable, and the abstract. Certainly, however, he carried sensibility and

tenderness into the highest regions of abstracted thought his enthusiasm spreads a glow even amongst "the shadowy tribes of mind," and his allegory is as sensible to the heart as it is visible to the fancy.

ODE TO EVENING.

IF aught of oaten stop or pastoral song,
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own brawling springs,

Thy springs, and dying gales;

O nymph reserved, while now the bright-hair'd sun Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts, With brede ethereal wove,

O'erhang his wavy bed :

Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-eyed bat,
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing,
Or where the beetle winds
His small but sullen horn,

As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum;
Now teach me, maid composed,
To breathe some soften'd strain,

Whose numbers stealing through thydarkeningvale
May not unseemly with its stillness suit,
As, musing slow, I hail

Thy genial, loved return!

For when thy folding-star arising shows His paly circlet, at his warning lamp The fragrant Hours, and Elves Who slept in buds the day,

[sedge,

And many a Nymph who wreathes her brows with
And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still,
The pensive Pleasures sweet
Prepare thy shadowy car.

Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene
Or find some ruin 'midst its dreary dells,
Whose walls more awful nod
By thy religious gleams.

Or if chill blustering winds, or driving rain,
Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut,

That from the mountain's side,
Views wilds, and swelling floods,

And hamlets brown, and dim-discover'd spires, And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all

Thy dewy fingers draw

The gradual dusky veil.

While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont,
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve!
While summer loves to sport
Beneath thy lingering light :

And joy untainted with his destined bride. Go! nor regardless, while these numbers boast My short lived bliss, forget my social name; But think, far off, how, on the southern coast, I met thy friendship with an equal flame ! Fresh to that soil thou turn'st, where every vale Shall prompt the poet, and his song demand: To thee thy copious subjects ne'er shall fail ;

Thou need'st but take thy pencil to thy hand, And paint what all believe, who own thy genial land.

There, must thou wake perforce thy Doric quill;

'Tis Fancy's land to which thou sett'st thy feet; Where still, 'tis said, the fairy people meet, Beneath each birken shade, on mead or hill. There, each trim lass, that skims the milky store, To the swart tribes their creamy bowls allots; By night they sip it round the cottage door, While airy minstrels warble jocund notes. There, every herd, by sad experience, knows

How, wing'd with fate, their elf-shot arrows fly, When the sick ewe her summer food foregoes, Or, stretch'd on earth, the heart-smit heifers lie.

[ It has not been observed that to the three last verses of this beautiful Ode, Burns was indebted for the idea of his Address to the Shade of Thomson. He had been reading Collins at the time.]

[ How truly did Collins predict Home's tragic powers!] A gentleman of the name of Barrow, who introduced Home to Collins. [Barrow had been out in the forty-five with Home.]

Such airy beings awe th' untutor'd swain: Nor, thou, though learn'd, his homelier thoughts neglect ;

Let thy sweet Muse the rural faith sustain ; These are the themes of simple sure effect, That add new conquests to her boundless reign, And fill, with double force, her heart-commanding strain.

Even yet preserved, how often may'st thou hear, Where to the pole the Boreal mountains run, Taught by the father to his listening son, Strange lays, whose power had charm'da Spenser's At every pause, before thy mind possest,

Old Runic bards shall seem to rise around, With uncouth lyres, in many-colour'd vest,

[ear.

Their matted hair with boughs fantastic crown'd: Whether thou bid'st the well-taught hind repeat The choral dirge, that mourns some chieftain brave,

When every shrieking maid her bosom beat,

And strew'd with choicest herbs his scented grave; Or whether, sitting in the shepherd's shiel*,

Thou hear'st some sounding tale of war'salarms; When at the bugle's call, with fire and steel, The sturdy clans pour'd forth their brawny

swarms,

And hostile brothers met to prove each other's arms.

'Tis thine to sing how, framing hideous spells, In Sky's lone isle, the gifted wizard-seer, Lodged in the wintery cave with Fate's fell spear, Or in the depth of Uist's dark forest dwells: How they, whose sight such dreary dreams engross,

With their own visions oft astonish'd droop,

When, o'er the wat'ry strath, or quaggy moss, They see the gliding ghosts unbodied troop.

Or, if in sports, or on the festive green, Their destined glance some fated youth descry, Who now, perhaps, in lusty vigour seen, And rosy health, shall soon lamented die.

For them the viewless forms of air obey Their bidding heed, and at their beck repair. They know what spirit brews the stormful day, And heartless, oft like moody madness, stare

To see the phantom train their secret work prepare.

To monarchs deart, some hundred miles astray, Oft have they seen Fate give the fatal blow! The seer, in Sky, shriek'd as the blood did flow, When headless Charles warm on the Scaffold lay!

* A summer hut, built in the high part of the mountains, to tend their flocks in the warm season, when the pasture is fine

† SUPPLEMENTAL LINES BY MR. MACKENZIE.
"Or on some bellying rock that shades the deep,
They view the lurid signs that cross the sky.
Where in the west, the brooding tempests lie ;
And hear the first faint rustling pennons sweep.
Or in the arched cave, where, deep and dark,
The broad unbroken billows heave and swell,
In horrid musings rapt, they sit to mark
The lab'ring moon; or list the nightly yell

As Boreas threw his young Aurora forth‡,
In the first year of the first George's reign,
And battles raged in welkin of the North,

They mourn'd in air, fell, fell Rebellion slain ! And as, of late, they joy'd in Preston's fight,

Saw at sad Falkirk all their hopes near crown'd! They raved divining through their second sight§, Pale, red Culloden, where these hopes were drown'd!

Illustrious William! Britain's guardian name! One William saved us from a tyrant's stroke; He, for a sceptre, gain'd heroic fame, [broke, But thou, more glorious, Slavery's chain hast To reigna private man, and bow to Freedom's yoke!

These, too, thou'lt sing! for well thy magic muse
Can to the topmost heaven of grandeur soar;
Or stoop to wail the swain that is no more!
Ah, homely swains! your homeward steps ne'er lose:
Let not dank Will mislead you to the heath:
Dancing in mirky night, o'er fen and lake,

He glows, to draw you downward to your death, In his bewitch'd low, marshy, willow brake! What though far off, from some dark dell espied,

His glimmering mazes cheer the excursive sight, Yet turn, ye wanderers, turn your steps aside,

Nor trust the guidance of that faithless light; For watchful, lurking, 'mid th' unrustling reed, At those mirk hours the wily monster lies, And listens oft to hear the passing steed,

And frequent round him rolls his sullen eyes, If chance his savage wrath may some weak wretch surprise.

Ah, luckless swain, o'er all unblest, indeed!

Whom late bewilder'd in the dank, dark fen, Far from his flocks, and smoking hamlet, then! To that sad spot where hums the sedgy weed: Of that dread spirit, whose gigantic form

The seer's entranced eye can well survey, Through the dim air who guides the driving storm, And points the wretched bark, its destined prey. Or him who hovers on his flagging wing,

O'er the dire whirlpool, that, in ocean's waste, Draws instant down whate'er devoted thing

The falling breeze within its reach hath placedThe distant seaman hears, and flies with trembling haste. Or, if on land the fiend exerts his sway, Silent he broods o'er quicksand, bog, or fen,

Far from the sheltering roof and haunts of men, When witched darkness shuts the eye of day, And shrouds each star that wont to cheer the night; Or, if the drifted snow perplex the way, With treacherous gleam he lures the fated wight, And leads him floundering on and quite astray." [Other verses were written by the late Lord Kinnedder, which Sir Walter Scott, in all the partiality of friendship, thought equal to the original. To add to an unfinished poem one must write with the same genius which the author wrote: and Collins, as Pope said of Akenside, was no every day-writer.] [The Northern Lights.]

§ Second sight is the term that is used for the divination of the Highlanders.

The Duke of Cumberland, who defeated the Pretender at the battle of Culloden.

A fiery meteor, called by various names, such as Will with the Wisp, Jack with the Lanthorn, &c. It hovers in the air over marshy and fenny places.

On him, enraged, the fiend, in angry mood, Shall never look with pity's kind concern,

But instant, furious, raise the whelming flood O'er its drown'd banks, forbidding all return! Or, if he meditate his wish'd escape, To some dim hill that seems uprising near,

To his faint eye, the grim and grisly shape, In all its terrors clad, shall wild appear.

Meantime the watery surge shall round him rise, Pour'd sudden forth from every swelling source ! What now remains but tears and hopeless sighs? His fierce-shook limbs have lost their youthly force, And down the waves he floats a pale and breathless corse!

For him in vain his anxious wife shall wait,
Or wander forth to meet him on his way;
For him in vain at to-fall of the day,

His babes shall linger at th' unclosing gate!
Ah, ne'er shall he return! Alone, if night,

Her travel'd limbs in broken slumbers steep! With drooping willows dress'd, his mournful sprite Shall visit sad, perchance, her silent sleep : Then he, perhaps, with moist and watery hand, Shall fondly seem to press her shuddering cheek, And with his blue-swoln face before her stand, And shivering cold, these piteous accents speak: "Pursue, dear wife, thy daily toils pursue,

At dawn or dusk, industrious as before; Nor e'er of me one helpless thought renew, While I lie weltering on the osier'd shore, Drown'd by the Kelpie's* wrath, nor e'er shall aid thee more!"

Unbounded is thy range; with varied skill [spring Thy Muse may, like those feathery tribes which From their rude rocks, extend her skirting wing Round the moist marge of each cold Hebrid isle, To that hoar pilet which still its ruins shows: In whose small vaults a pigmy-folk is found,

Whose bones the delver with his spade upthrows, And culls them, wond'ring, from the hallow'd ground!

Or thither, where beneath the show'ry west
The mighty kings of three fair realms are laid:
Once foes, perhaps, together now they rest,

No slaves revere them, and no wars invade : Yet frequent now, at midnight solemn hour,

The rifted mounds their yawning cells unfold, And forth the monarchs stalk with sovereign power, In pageant robes, and wreath'd with sheeny gold, And on their twilight tombs aerial council hold.

But, oh, o'er all, forget not Kilda's race,

[tides,

On whose bleak rocks, which brave the wasting Fair Nature's daughter, Virtue, yet abides. Go! just, as they, their blameless manners trace!

*The water fiend.

† One of the Hebrides is called the Isle of Pigmies; where it is reported, that several miniature bones of the human species have been dug up in the ruins of a chapel | there.

Icolmkill, one of the Hebrides, where near sixty of the ancient Scottish, Irish, and Norwegian kings are interred.

Then to my ear transmit some gentle song, Of those whose lives are yet sincere and plain, Their bounded walks the rugged cliffs along, And all their prospect but the wintery main. With sparing temperance at the needful time They drain the scented spring; or, hunger-prest, Along th' Atlantic rock undreading climb, And of its eggs despoil the solan's § nest.

Thus blest in primal innocence they live, Sufficed, and happy with that frugal fare

Which tasteful toil and hourly danger give. Hard is their shallow soil, and bleak and bare; Nor ever vernal bee was heard to murmur there!

Nor need'st thou blush that such false themes engage
Thy gentle mind, of fairer stores possest;
For not alone they touch the village breast,
But fill'd, in elder time, th' historic page.
There, Shakspeare's self, with every garland
crown'd,

Flew to those fairy climes his fancy sheen,

In musing hour; his wayward sisters found, And with their terrors drest the magic scene. From them he sung, when, 'mid his bold design, Before the Scot, afflicted and aghast,

The shadowy kings of Banquo's fated line, Through the dark cave in gleamy pageant past.

Proceed! nor quit the tales which, simply told, Could once so well my answering bosom pierce; Proceed, in forceful sounds, and colours bold, The native legends of thy land rehearse; To such adapt thy lyre, and suit thy powerfa!

verse.

In scenes like these, which, daring to depart

From sober truth, are still to nature true, And call forth fresh delight to Fancy's view, Th' heroic Muse employ'd her Tasso's art!

How have I trembled, when, at Tancred's stroke, Its gushing blood the gaping cypress pour'd! When each live plant with mortal accents spoke, And the wild blast upheaved the vanish'd sword! How have I sat, when piped the pensive wind, To hear his harp by British Fairfax strung!

Prevailing poet! whose undoubting mind Believed the magic wonders which he sung!

Hence, at each sound, imagination glows! Hence, at each picture, vivid life starts here!

Hence his warm lay with softest sweetness flows' Melting it flows, pure, murmuring, strong and clear,

And fills th' impassion'd heart, and wins th' harmonious ear!

All hail, ye scenes that o'er my soul prevail !

Ye splendid friths and lakes, which, far away, Are by smooth Anuan || fill'd, or past'ral Tay. Or Don's romantic springs, at distance hail!

§ An aquatic bird like a goose, on the eggs of which the inhabitants of St. Kilda, another of the Hebrides, chiefly subsist.

Three rivers in Scotland.

The time shall come, when I, perhaps, may tread Your lowly glens*,o'erhung with spreading broom; Or o'er your stretching heaths, by Fancy led;

Or o'er your mountains creep, in awful gloom! Then will I dress once more the faded bower, Where Jonson + sat in Drummond's classic shade; Or crop, from Tiviotdale, each lyric flower, * Valleys.

Ben Jonson paid a visit on foot, in 1619, to the Scotch poet Drummond, at his seat of Hawthornden, within four miles of Edinburgh.

And mourn, on Yarrow's banks, where Willy's laid!

Meantime, ye powers that on the plains which bore The cordial youth, on Lothian's plains, attend!Where'er Home dwells, on hill, or lowly moor,

To him I lose, your kind protection lend, And, touch'd with love like mine, preserve my absent friend!

Barrow, it seems, was at the Edinburgh university, which is in the county of Lothian.

EDWARD MOORE was the son of a dissenting clergyman at Abingdon, in Berkshire, and was bred to the business of a linen-draper, which he pursued, however, both in London and Ireland, with so little success, that he embraced the literary life (according to his own account) more from necessity than inclination. His Fables (in 1744) first brought him into notice. The Right Honourable Mr. Pelham was one of his earliest friends; and his Trial of Selim gained him the friendship of Lord Lyttelton. Of three works which he produced for the stage, his two comedies, the " Foundling" and "Gil Blas," were unsuccessful; but he was fully indemnified by the profits and reputation of the "Gamester." Moore himself acknowledges that he owed to Garrick many popular passages of his drama; and Davies, the biographer of Garrick, ascribes to the great actor the whole scene between Lewson and Stukely, in the fourth act; but Davies's authority is not oracular. About the year 1751

Lord Lyttelton, in concert with Dodsley, projected the paper of the "World," of which it was agreed that Moore should enjoy the profits, whether the numbers were written by himself or by volunteer contributors. Lyttelton's interest soon enlisted many accomplished coadjutors, such as Cambridge, Jenyns, Lord Chesterfield, and H. Walpole. Moore himself wrote sixty-one of the papers. In the last number of the "World" the conclusion is made to depend on a fictitious incident which had occasioned the death of the author. When the papers were collected into volumes, Moore, who superintended the publication, realised this jocular fiction by his own death, whilst the last number was in the press §.

[§ Mr. Moore was a poet who never had justice done him while living. There are few of the moderns who have a more correct taste, or a more pleasing manner of expressing their thoughts. It was upon his Fables he chiefly founded his reputation; yet they are by no means his best production.-GOLDSMITH.]

FF