And foftering Freedom bade her chiffel trace
Unfetter'd forms of dignity and
Propitious both to Art: but higher ftill
Flows the bright fountain of her plastic skill.
Homer first vivifi'd the public mind,
Arm'd it with strength, with elegance refin'd;
From him, that mind with images replete,
As Sculpture potent, and as Painting sweet,
Grew by degrees, in various branches bright;
Congenial faculties purfu'd his flight ;
And Phidias rofe, while Art and Nature fmil'd,
The mighty poet's intellectual child
Whom Sculpture boasted in her proudest hour,
By Heaven invested with Homeric power.
When, truer to itself, the British mind,
More keen for honours of the purest kind,
To Milton's genius fuch regard fhall pay
As Greece for Homer gloried to display,
Like Phidias, then, her fculptors fhall aspire
To quicken marble with Miltonic fire;
And attic deities fhall yield the palm
To lovelier forms, feraphically calm.
Fine Art's important growth in every clime
Requires the flow progreffive aid of Time.
In Greece, where Sculpture reach'd fuch heights at last,
That Nature, smiling, own'd herself supass'd,
Observe how ages her long childhood nurs'd,
And how her ripen'd charms excell'd the first!
Behold her Dedalus, whom fables praise,
The boast and wonder of her early days!
He, daring artist, in a period dark,
In death-like forms infus'd a living fpark
He loosen'd from the fide the lifelefs arm,
Gave to the open'd eyes a speaking charm,
And fuch an air of action to the whole
That his rude ftatue feem'd to have a foul.
Thou great artificer of deathless fame!
Thy varied skill has prov'd the sport of Fame,
Who fhews, half shrouded in the veil of Time,
Thy real talents, thy imputed crime;
A crime as falfe, in Reafon's friendly fight,
As through the buoyant air thy fabled flight.
Thefeus and Hercules with thee combin'd
By different toils to meliorate mankind :
They labour'd to fecure, by glorious ftrife,
And thou, by glorious arts, to fweeten life.
Though dim traditions all thy merit show,
Too well one feature of thy fate we know :
Genius and misery, (fo oft, on earth,
Severely blended in the lot of worth,)—
These both were thine, and both in rare extremes,
Yet both were recompens'd by glory's beams:
Thy native Athens in thy praise was loud,
And grateful Ægypt to thy image bow'd.
Ruin has funk within her drear domain
Thy attic figures, thy Ægyptian fane;
Glory still grants, thy fav'rite name to grace,
One monument that Time can ne'er deface,
Where Pathos, while her lips thy pangs rehearse,
Shews thy parental heart enshrin'd in Virgil's verse.
Unhappy genius of a brutal age!
Admir'd and fpurn'd by ignorance and rage!
Though ftyl'd a murd'rer, who, with envy blind,
Kill'd the keen scholar to his charge confign'd;
Though doom'd to forrow's most oppreffive weight,
To mourn a darling fon's disastrous fate;
Just Heaven allow'd thy tortur'd mind to rest
On one difciple, in thy guidance bleft-
Thy kind Endæus joy'd thy lot to share,
Thy friend in exile, and in art thy heir!
A witness of his skill Minerva stood —
Coloffal deity in sculptur'd wood;
And from his touch less-yielding ivory caught
Of life the femblance, and the air of thought.
The different ufes of an art divine
From thee he learnt; for Art's wide field was thine: 250
Rich, though yet rude; where her prophetic eyes
Saw diftant wonders from thy genius rife,
Whose native strength, like England's early fage,
Bursting the barriers of a barbarous age,
Emerg'd, while Nature bade thy mimic ftrife
Make bold advances to ideal life.
Not vain, O Dædalus! thy toil, to raise
A varied column of inventive praise;
Though loft to fight each boldly-labour'd mass
Of wood, of ftone, of ivory, of brass,
That from thy fpirit vital femblance won ;
Though Time, unfeeling, crufh'd thy fculptur'd fon,
Whose form, more fondly labour'd than thy own,
In radiant bronze with radiant luftre fhone,
And long to ftrangers would thy love attest,
An idol of the land that gave thee rest -
Though these were funk in early ruin, still,
An happier offspring of thy plastic skill,
Schools of Greek art arose, with spirit free,
And bleft a bold progenitor in thee *.
Ægina, like the morning's early rays,
And Corinth, bright as the meridian blaze ;
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