Upon the bosom bright of silver Thames,
Launches in all the lustre of brocade,
Amid the splendors of the laughing sun;
The gay description palls upon the sense
And coldly strikes the mind with feeble bliss.
Pleasures of Melancholy.

Warton's mind was formed for the grand and the sublime. Were his imitations less verbal, and less numerous, I should be led to imagine, that the peculiar beauties of his favourite authors had sunk so impressively into his mind, that he had unwittingly appropriated them as his own; but they are in general such as to preclude the idea.

To the metrical, and other intrinsic ornaments of style, he appears to have paid due attention. If we meet with an uncouth expression, we immediately perceive that it is peculiarly appropriate, and that no other term could have been made use of with so happy an effect. His poems abound with alliterative lines. Indeed, this figure seems to have been his favourite; and he studiously seeks every opportunity to introduce it: however, it must be acknowledged, that his "daisy-dappled dales," &c. occur too frequently.

The poem on which Warton's fame (as a poet) principally rests, is the "Pleasures of Melancholy," and (notwithstanding the perpetual recurrence of ideas which are borrowed from other poets) there are few pieces

which I have perused with more exquisite gratification. The gloomy tints with which he overcasts his descriptions; his highly figurative language; and, above all, the antique air which the poem wears, convey the most sublime ideas to the mind.

Of the other pieces of this poet, some are excellent, and they all rise above mediocrity. In his sonnets he has succeeded wonderfully; that written at Winslade, and the one to the river Lodon, are peculiarly beautiful, and that to Mr. Gray is most elegantly turned. The "Ode on the approach of Summer," is replete with genius and poetic fire; and even over the Birth-day odes, which he wrote as poet laureat, his genius has cast energy and beauty. His humourous pieces, and satires, abound in wit; and, in short, taking him altogether, he is an ornament to our country and our language, and it is to be regretted, that the profusion with which he has made use of the beauties of other poets, should have given room for censure.

I should have closed my short, and I fear jejune essay on Warton, but that I wished to hint to your truly elegant and acute Stamford correspondent, Octavius Gilchrist, (whose future remarks on Warton's imitations I await with considerable impatience) that the passage in the pleasures of Melancholy—

or ghostly shape,

At distance seen, invites, with beck'ning hand,
-Thy lonesome steps,

which he supposes to be taken from the following in Comus,

Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men's names,

is more probably taken from the commencement of Pope's elegy on an unfortunate lady

What beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?

The original idea was possibly taken from Comus by Pope, from whom Warton, to all appearance, again borrowed it.

Were the similarity of the passage in Gray, to that in Warton, less striking and verbal, I should be inclined to think it only a remarkable coincidence; for Gray's biographers inform us, that he commenced his elegy in 1742, and that it was completed in 1744, being the year which he particularly devoted to the muses, though he did not "put the finishing stroke to it," until 1750. The Pleasures of Melancholy were published in 4to. in 1747. Therefore Gray might take his third stanza from Warton; but it is rather extraordinary that the third stanza of a poem should be taken from another, published five years after that poem was begun, and three after it was understood to be completed; one cir

cumstance, however, seems to render the supposition of its being a plagiarism somewhat more probable, which is, that the stanza in question is not essential to the connexion of the preceding and antecedent verses; therefore it might have been added by Gray, when he put the "finishing stroke" to his piece in 1750.

CURSORY REMARKS ON TRAGEDY.

THE pleasure which is derived from the representation of an affecting tragedy, has often been the subject of enquiry among philosophical critics, as a singular phenomenon. That the mind should receive gratification from the excitement of those passions which are in themselves painful, is really an extraordinary paradox, and is the more inexplicable since, when the same means are employed to rouse the more pleasing affections, no adequate effect is produced.

In order to solve this problem, many ingenious hypotheses have been invented. The Abbe Du Bos tells us that the mind has such a natural antipathy to a state of listlessness and langour, as to render the transition from it to a state of exertion, even though by rousing passions in themselves painful, as in the instance of tragedy, a positive pleasure. Monsieur Fontenelle has given us a more satisfactory account. He tells us that pleasure and pain, two sentiments so different in themselves, do not differ so much in their cause;—that pleasure, carried too far, becomes pain, and pain, a little moderated, becomes pleasure. Hence that the pleasure we derive from tragedy is a pleasing sorrow, a modulated pain. David Hume, who has also written upon this subject, unites the two systems, with this addition, that the painful emotions ex