This poem is one of those happinesses in which This ode has by many been thought equal to a poet excels himself, as there is nothing in all the former. As it is a repetition of Dryden's manShenstone which any way approaches it in merit; ner, it is so far inferior to him. The whole hint and, though I dislike the imitations of our old of Orpheus, with many of the lines, has been English poets in general, yet, on this minute sub-taken from an obscure Ode upon Music, published ject, the antiquity of the style produces a very in Tate's Miscellanies. ludicrous solemnity. COOPER'S HILL. This poem by Denham, though it may have been exceeded by later attempts in description, yet deserves the highest applause, as it far surpasses all that went before it; the concluding part, though a little too much crowded, is very masterly. ELOISA TO ABELARD. poem is THE SHEPHERD'S WEEK, IN SIX PASTORALS. These are Mr. Gay's principal performance. They were originally intended, I suppose, as a burlesque on those of Phillips; but perhaps, without designing it, he has hit the true spirit of pastoral poetry. In fact he more resembles Theocritus than any other English pastoral writer whatsoever. There runs through the whole a strain of rustic pleasantry, which should ever distinguish this spelength, although the passions vary with great cies of composition; but how far the antiquated judgment. It may be considered as superior to expressions used here may contribute to the hu any thing in the epistolary way; and the many mour, I will not determine; for my own part, I translations which have been made of it into the could wish the simplicity were preserved, without modern languages, are in some measure a proof of recurring to such obsolete antiquity for the manner of expressing it. The harmony of numbers in this very fine. It is rather drawn out to too tedious a this. AN EPISTLE FROM MR. PHILIPS TO THE EARL OF DORSET. MAC FLECKNOE. The severity of this satire, and the excellence of its versification, give it a distinguished rank in this species of composition. At present, an ordinary The opening of this poem is incomparably fine. reader would scarcely suppose that Shadwell, who The latter part is tedious and trifling. is here meant by Mac Flecknoe, was worth being chastised; and that Dryden, descending to such am told, had no good original manner of his own, game, was like an eagle stooping to catch flies. The truth however is, Shadwell at one time held divided reputation with this great poet. Every age produces its fashionable dunces, who, by following the transient topic or humour of the day, supply talkative ignorance with materials for conversation. ON POETRY.-A RHAPSODY. yet we see how well he succeeds when he turns an imitator; for the following are rather imitations than ridiculous parodies. A NIGHT PIECE ON DEATH. The great fault of this piece, written by Dr. Parnell, is, that it is in eight syllable lines, very improper for the solemnity of the subject; otherwise, the poem is natural, and the reflections just. Here follows one of the best versified poems in our language, and the most masterly production of its author. The severity with which Walpole is here treated, was in consequence of that minister's having refused to provide for Swift in England, pily applied, or a tale better told, than this. when applied to for that purpose, in the year 1725 (If I remember right). The severity of a poet, however, gave Walpole very little uneasiness. A man whose schemes, like this minister's, seldom extended beyond the exigency of the year, but little regarded the contempt of posterity. OF THE USE OF RICHES. This poem, as Mr. Pope tells us himself, cost much attention and labour; and from the easiness that appears in it, one would be apt to think as much. A FAIRY TALE. BY DR. PARNELL. Never was the old manner of speaking more hap PALEMON AND LAVINIA. Mr. Thomson, though in general a verbose and affected poet, has told this story with unusual simplicity: it is rather given here for being much esteemed by the public than by the editor. THE BASTARD. Almost all things written from the heart, as this certainly was, have some merit. The poet here describes sorrows and misfortunes which were by no means imaginary; and thus there runs a truth of thinking through this poem, without which it would be of little value, as Savage is, in other respects, but an indifferent poet. THE POET AND HIS PATRON. FROM THE DISPENSARY.-CANTO VI. This sixth canto of the Dispensary, by Dr. Garth, has more merit than the whole preceding part of the poem, and, as I am told, in the first edition of this work, it is more correct than as here exhibited; but that edition I have not been able to Mr. Moore was a poet that never had justice find. The praises bestowed on this poem are more done him while living; there are few of the mothan have been given to any other; but our appro-derns have a more correct taste, or a more pleasing bation at present is cooler, for it owed part of its fame to party. SELIM; OR, THE SHEPHERD'S MORAL. manner of expressing their thoughts. It was upon AN EPISTLE TO A LADY. The following eclogues, written by Mr. Collins, 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 mag-ing. nificence and manners is a subject as yet unat- of the tempted among us, and, I believe, capable of furnishing a great variety of poetical imagery. HANS CARVEL. This bagatelle, for which, by the by, Mr. Prior THE SPLENDID SHILLING. has got his greatest reputation, was a tale told in all This is reckoned the best parody of Milton in the old Italian collections of jests, and borrowed from our language: it has been a hundred times imi- thence by Fontaine. It had been translated once tated without success. The truth is, the first thing or twice before into English, yet was never rein this way must preclude all future attempts; for garded till it fell into the hands of Mr. Prior. A nothing is so easy as to burlesque any man's man- strong instance how much every thing is improved ner, when we are once showed the way. in the hands of a man of genius. A PIPE OF TOBACCO. IN IMITATION OF SIX SEVERAL AUTHORS. BAUCIS AND PHILEMON. This poem is very fine, and, though in the same Mr. Hawkins Browne, the author of these, as I strain with the preceding, is yet superior. TO THE EARL OF WARWICK, ON THE DEATH OF MR. ADDISON. This elegy (by Mr. Tickell) is one of the finest in our language: there is so little new that can be said upon the death of a friend, after the complaints of Ovid and the Latin Italians in this way, that one is surprised to see so much novelty in this to strike us, and so much interest to affect. COLIN AND LUCY.-A BALLAD. Through all Tickell's Works there is a strain of ballad-thinking, if I may so express it; and in this professed ballad he seems to have surpassed himself. It is, perhaps, the best in our language in this way. THE TEARS OF SCOTLAND. This ode, by Dr. Smollett, does rather more honour to the author's feelings than his taste. The mechanical part, with regard to numbers and language, is not so perfect as so short a work as this requires; but the pathetic it contains, particularly in the last stanza but one, is exquisitely fine. ON THE DEATH OF THE LORD PRO TECTOR. fonder of dazzling than pleasing; of raising our admiration for his wit than our dislike of the follies he ridicules. A PASTORAL BALLAD. The ballads of Mr. Shenstone are chiefly commended for the natural simplicity of the thoughts, and the harmony of the versification. However, they are not excellent in either. PHOEBE.-A PASTORAL This, by Dr. Byron, is a better effort than the preceding. A SONG. "Despairing beside a clear stream." This, by Mr. Rowe, is better than any thing of the kind in our language. AN ESSAY ON POETRY. This work, by the Duke of Buckingham, is enrolled among our great English productions. The precepts are sensible, the poetry not indifferent, but it has been praised more than it deserves. CADENAS AND VANESSA. ALMA; OR, THE PROGRESS OF THE MIND. This is thought one of Dr. Swift's correctest Our poetry was not quite harmonized in Wal- pieces; its chief merit, indeed, is the elegant ease ler's time; so that this, which would be now look- with which a story, but ill conceived in itself, is ed upon as a slovenly sort of versification, was, told. with respect to the times in which it was written, almost a prodigy of harmony. A modern reader will chiefly be struck with the strength of thinking, and the turn of the compliments bestowed upon the usurper. Every body has heard the answer our poet made Charles II. who asked him how his poem upon Cromwell came to be finer than his panegyric upon himself? "Your Majesty," replies Waller, "knows that poets always succeed best in fiction." THE STORY OF PHOEBUS AND The French claim this as belonging to them. To whomsoever it belongs, the thought is finely turned. NIGHT THOUGHTS. BY DR. YOUNG. These seem to be the best of the collection; from whence only the first two are taken. They are spoken of differently, either with exaggerated applause or contempt, as the reader's disposition is either turned to mirth or melancholy. SATIRE I. Παντα γέλως, και παντα κυνίς, και πάντα το μηδεν What Prior meant by this poem I can't understand: by the Greek motto to it, one would think it was either to laugh at the subject or his reader. There are some parts of it very fine; and let them save the badness of the rest. PREFACE ΤΟ A COLLECTION OF POEMS, FOR YOUNG LADIES, DEVOTIONAL, MORAL, AND ENTERTAINING. [First Printed in the year 1767.] DR. FORDYCE'S excellent Sermons for Young Women in some measure gave rise to the following compilation. In that work, where he so judi Young's Satires were in higher reputation when ciously points out all the defects of female conduct published than they stand in at present. He seems to remedy them, and all the proper studies whic? they should pursue, with a view to improvement, differ in this, that he mutilated with a bad design, poetry is one to which he particularly would at- I from motives of a contrary nature. tach them. He only objects to the danger of pursuing this charming study through all the immoralities and false pictures of happiness with which it abounds, and thus becoming the martyr of innocent curiosity. It will be easier to condemn a compilation of this kind, than to prove its inutility. While young ladies are readers, and while their guardians are solicitous that they shall only read the best books, there can be no danger of a work of this kind beIn the following compilation, care has been taken ing disagreeable. It offers, in a very small comto select not only such pieces as innocence may pass, the very flowers of our poetry, and that of a read without a blush, but such as will even tend kind adapted to the sex supposed to be its readers. to strengthen that innocence. In this little work, Poetry is an art which no young lady can or ought a lady may find the most exquisite pleasure, while to be wholly ignorant of. The pleasure which it she is at the same time learning the duties of life; gives, and indeed the necessity of knowing enough and, while she courts only entertainment, be de- of it to mix in modern conversation, will evince the ceived into wisdom. Indeed, this would be too usefulness of my design, which is to supply the great a boast in the preface to any original work; highest and the most innocent entertainment at the but here it can be made with safety, as every poem smallest expensc; as the poems in this collection, in the following collection would singly have pro- if sold singly, would amount to ten times the price cured an author great reputation. of what I am able to afford the present. They are divided into Devotional, Moral, and Entertaining, thus comprehending the three great duties of life; that which we owe to God, to our neighbour, and to ourselves. CRITICISM ON MASSEY'S TRANSLATION OF THE FASTI OF OVID. In the first part, it must be confessed, our English poets have not very much excelled. In that department, namely, the praise of our Maker, by which poetry began, and from which it deviated by time, we are most faultily deficient. There are one or two, however, particularly the Deity, by Mr. Boyse; a poem, when it first came out, that lay for some time neglected, till introduced to pubIr was no bad remark of a celebrated French lic notice by Mr. Hervey and Mr. Fielding. In lady,* that a bad translator was like an ignorant it the reader will perceive many striking pictures, footman, whose blundering messages disgraced his and perhaps glow with a part of that gratitude which seems to have inspired the writer. a [Published in the year 1757.] master by the awkwardness of the delivery, and frequently turned compliment into abuse, and In the moral part I am more copious, from the politeness into rusticity. We can not indeed see same reason, because our language contains a large an ancient elegant writer mangled and misreprenumber of the kind. Voltaire, talking of our poets, sented by the doers into English, without some gives them the preference in moral pieces to those degree of indignation; and are heartily sorry that of any other nation; and indeed no poets have bet- our poor friend Ovid should send his sacred kalenter settled the bounds of duty, or more precisely dar to us by the hands of Mr. William Massey, determined the rules for conduct in life than ours. who, like the valet, seems to have entirely forgot In this department, the fair reader will find the his master's message, and substituted another in Muse has been solicitous to guide her, not with its room very unlike it. Mr. Massey observes in the allurements of a syren, but the integrity of his preface, with great truth, that it is strange that friend. this most elaborate and learned of all Ovid's works In the entertaining part, my greatest difficulty should be so much neglected by our English translawas what to reject. The materials lay in such tors; and that it should be so little read or regarded, plenty, that I was bewildered in my choice: in this whilst his Tristia, Epistles, and Metamorphoses, are case, then, I was solely determined by the tenden- in almost every schoolboy's hands. "All the critics, cy of the poem: and where I found one, however in general," says he, "speak of this part of Ovid's well executed, that seemed in the least tending to writings with a particular applause; yet I know distort the judgment, or inflame the imagination, not by what unhappy fate there has not been that it was excluded without mercy. I have here and use made thereof, which would be more beneficial, there, indeed, when one of particular beauty offer- in many respects, to young students of the Latin ed with a few blemishes, lopped off the defects; tongue, than any other of this poet's works. For and thus, like the tyrant who fitted all strangers to though Pantheons, and other books that treat of the bed he had prepared for them, I have inserted some, by first adapting them to my plan: we only • Madame La Fayette. Nonarum tutela Deo caret. Omnibus istis (Ne fallere cave) proximus Ater erit. Omen ab eventu est: illis nam Roma diebus Damna sub adverso tristia Marte tulit. the Roman mythology, may be usefully put into the hands of young proficients in the Latin tongue, yet the richest fund of that sort of learning is here to be found in the Fasti. I am not without hopes, therefore, that by thus making this book more fa- Ovid's address to Janus, than which in the orimiliar and easy, in this dress, to English readers, ginal scarce any thing can be more poetical, is thus it will the more readily gain admittance into our familiarized into something much worse than prose public schools; and that those who become better by the translator – acquainted therewith, will find it an agreeable and instructive companion, well stored with recondite learning. I persuade myself also, that the notes which I have added to my version will be of advantage, not only to the mere English reader, but likewise to such as endeavour to improve them «Say, Janus, say, why we begin the year And his whole answer to two verses tied. The winter tropic ends the solar race, selves in the knowledge of the Roman language. "As the Latin proverb says, Jacta est alea; and my performance must take its chance, as those of other poetic adventurers have done before me. I am very sensible, that I have fallen in many places far below my original; and no wonder, as I had to copy after so fertile and polite a genius as Ovid's; who, as my Lord Orrery, somewhere in Dean Swift's Life, humorously observes, could make an instructive song out of an old almanack. "That my translation is more diffuse, and not brought within the same number of verses contained in my original, is owing to two reasons; firstly, because of the concise and expensive nature of the Latin tongue, which it is very difficult (at least I find it so) to keep to strictly, in our language; and Replied the god; that business may be done, secondly, I took the liberty, sometimes to expatiate And active labour emulate the sun, a little upon my subject, rather than leave it in With business is the year auspiciously begun; obscurity, or unintelligible to my English readers, But every artist, soon as he was tried being indifferent whether they may call it transla- To work a little, lays his work aside. tion or paraphrase; for, in short, I had this one Then I; but further, father Janus, say, design most particularly in view, that these Roman When to the gods we our devotions pay, Fasti might have a way opened for their entrance into our grammar-schools." What use this translation may be of to grammar-schools, we can not pretend to guess, unless, by way of foil, to give the boys a higher opinion of the beauty of the original by the deformity of so bad a copy. But let our readers judge of Mr. Massey's performance by the following specimen. For the better determination of its merit, we shall subjoin the original of every quotation. "The calends of each month throughout the Vindicat Ausonias Junonis cura kalendas: year, Are suits commenced in courts? The reason's plain, Why wine and incense first to thee are given? Dic, age, frigoribus quare novus incipit annus, |