part are set forth to view: but, when expectation is at the height, the King makes a speech, and

Henceforth a series of new times began.

Who can forbear to think of an enchanted caftle, with a wide moat and lofty battlements, walls of marble and gates of brafs, which vanishes at once into air, when the deftined knight blows his horn before it ?

In the fecond part, written by Tate, there is a long infertion, which, for its poignancy of fatire, exceeds any part of the former. Perfonal refentment, though no laudable motive to fatire, can add great force to general principles. Self-love is a bufy prompter.

The Medal, written upon the fame principles with Abfalom and Achitophel, but upon a narrower plan, gives lefs pleasure, though it difcovers equal abilities in the writer. The fuperftructure cannot extend beyond the foundation; a fingle character or incident cannot furnish as many ideas, as a series of events, or multiplicity of agents. This poem therefore, fince time has left it to itself, is not much read, nor perhaps generally understood; yet it abounds with touches both of humorous and ferious fatire. The picture of a man whofe propenfions to mischief are fuch, that his best actions are but inability of wickedness, is very fkilfully delineated and strongly coloured:

Power was his aim; but, thrown from that pretence,
The wretch turn'd loyal in his own defence,
And malice reconcil'd him to his prince.
Him, in the anguish of his foul, he ferv'd;
Rewarded fafter ftill than he deferv'd:

Behold

Behold him now exalted into truft;
His counfels oft convenient, feldom juft;
Ev'n in the moft fincere advice he gave,
He had a grudging ftill to be a knave.
The frauds, he learnt in his fanatick years,
Made him uneafy in his lawful gears,
At least as little honeft as he cou'd,
And, like white witches, mifchievously good.
To this first bias, longingly, he leans ;
And rather would be great by wicked means.

The Threnodia, which, by a term I am afraid neither authorized nor analogical, he calls Auguftalis, is not among his happieft productions. Its firft and obvious defect is the irregularity of its metre, to which the ears of that age, however, were accuftomed. What is worse, it has neither tenderness nor dignity; it is neither magnificent nor pathetick. He feems to look round him for images which he cannot find, and what he has he diftorts by endeavouring to enlarge them. "He is," he says, “pe"trified with grief;" but the marble fometimes relents, and trickles in a joke:

The fons of art all med'cines try'd,
And every noble remedy apply'd:

With emulation each effay'd

His utmost skill; nay, more, they pray'd:
Was never lofing game with better condu& play'd.

He had been a little inclined to merriment before, upon the prayers of a nation for their dying fovereign; nor was he serious enough to keep Heathen fables out

of his religion :

With him the innumerable crowd of armed prayers Knock'd at the gates of Heaven, and knock'd aloud The first well-meaning rude petitioners

All for his life affail'd the throne,

All would have brib'd the fkies by offering up their

own.

So great a throng not Heaven itself could bar;
'Twas almoft borne by force as in the giants war.
The prav'rs, at leaft, for his reprieve, were heard ;
His death, like Hezekiah's, was deferr'd.

There is throughout the compofition a defire of fplendour without wealth. In the conclufion he feems too much pleased with the profpect of the new reign to have lamented his old mafter with much fincerity.

He did not 'mifcarry in this attempt for want of fkill either in lyrick or elegiack poetry. His poem on the death of Mrs. Killegrew is undoubtedly the nobleft ode that our language ever has produced. The first part flows with a torrent of enthusiasm.

Fervet immenfufque ruit." All the ftanzas indeed are not equal. An Imperial crown cannot be one continued diamond; the gems must be held together by fome lefs valuable matter.

In his firft ode for Cecilia's day, which is loft in the fplendour of the fecond, there are paffages which would have dignified any other poet. The firft ftanza is vigorous and elegant, though the word diapafon is too technical, and the rhymes are too remote from one another.

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,

This univerfal frame began;

When Nature underneath a heap of jarring atoms lay,

And

And could not heave her head,

The tuneful voice was heard from high,
Arife, ye more than dead.

Then cold and hot, and moift and dry,
In order to their stations leap,

And mufick's power obey.

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,

This univerfal frame began:

From harmony to harmony

Through all the compafs of the notes it ran,

The diapafon clofing full in man.

The conclufion is likewise striking; but it includes an image fo awful in itself, that it can owe little to poetry; and I could wish the antithefis of musick untuning had found fome other place.

As from the power of facred lays
The fpheres began to move,

And fung the great Creator's praise
To all the blefs'd above:

So, when the laft and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead fhall live, the living die,
And mufick fhall untune the sky.

Of his fkill in elegy he has given a fpecimen in his Eleonora, of which the following lines difcover their author:

Though all thefe rare endowments of the mind
Were in a narrow fpace of life confin'd,
The figure was with full perfection crown'd,
Though not fo large an orb, as truly round:
VOL. IX.

EE.

As

As when in glory, through the publick place,
The fpoils of conquer'd nations were to pafs,
And but one day for triumph was allow'd,
The conful was conftrain'd his pomp to crowd;
And fo the fwift proceffion hurry'd on,
That all, though not diftinctly, might be shown;
So, in the straiten'd bounds of life confin'd,
She gave but glimpfes of her glorious mind:
And multitudes of virtues pass'd along ;
Each preffing foremoft in the mighty throng,
Ambitious to be feen, and then make room
For greater multitudes that were to come.
Yet unemploy'd no minute flipp'd away;
Moments were precious in fo fhort a stay.
The hafte of Heaven to have her was fo great,

That fome were fingle acts, though each complete;}
And every act ftood ready to repeat.

This piece, however, is not without its faults; there is so much likeness in the initial comparison, that there is no illuftration. As a king would be lamented, Eleonora was lamented:

As, when fome great and gracious monarch dies,
Soft whispers, first, and mournful murmurs, rife
Among the fad attendants; then the found
Soon gathers voice, and spreads the news around,
Through town and country, till the dreadful blast
Is blown to distant colonies at laft,

Who then, perhaps, were offering vows in vain,
For his long life, and for his happy reign;
So flowly, by degrees, unwilling Fame
Did matchlefs Eleonora's fate proclaim,
Till publick as the lofs the news became.

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