Now on the mountain-wave on high they ride,
Then downward plunge beneath th' involving tide;
Till one, who seems in agony to strive,

The whirling breakers heave on shore alive;
The rest a speedier end of anguish knew,
And prest the stony beach, a lifeless crew!

Next, O unhappy chief! th' eternal doom
Of heaven decreed thee to the briny tomb!
What scenes of misery torment thy view!
What painful struggles of thy dying crew!
Thy perish'd hopes all buried in the flood,
O'erspread with corses! red with human blood!
So pierc'd with anguish hoary Priam gaz'd,
When Troy's imperial domes in ruin blaz'd;
While he, severest sorrow doom'd to feel,
Expir'd beneath the victor's murdering steel.
Thus with his helpless partners till the last,
Sad refuge! Albert hugs the floating mast;
His soul could yet sustain the mortal blow,
But droops, alas! beneath superior woe:
For now soft nature's sympathetic chain
Tugs at his yearning heart with powerful strain;
His faithful wife for ever doom'd to mourn
For him, alas! who never shall return;
To black adversity's approach expos'd,

With want and hardships unforeseen enclos'd:
His lovely daughter left without a friend,
Her innocence to succor and defend;
By youth and indigence set forth a prey
To lawless guilt, that flatters to betray-
While these reflections rack his feeling mind,
Rodmond, who hung beside, his grasp resign'd;
And, as the tumbling waters o'er him roll'd,
His out-stretch'd arms the master's legs enfold.-
Sad Albert feels the dissolution near

And strives in vain his fetter'd limbs to clear;
For death bids every clinching joint adhere.
All-faint, to heaven he throws his dying eyes,
And, "O protect my wife and child!" he cries:
The gushing streams roll back th' unfinish'd sound!
He gasps! he dies! and tumbles to the ground!

MARK AKENSIDE, 1721-1770.

FEW English poets of the eighteenth century are to be ranked before the author of the "Pleasures of the Imagination." He was born on the 9th of November, 1721, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and was educated at the University of Edinburgh. His parents designed him for the ministry, but as his education progressed, other views governed him, and he devoted himself to

the study of medicine as his future profession. After remaining three years at the Scottish capital, he went to Leyden, where he also studied three years, and took his degree of M. D. in 1744. Returning home the same year, he published his poem, "The Pleasures of the Imagination." On offering the copy to Dodsley, he demanded £120 for the manuscript, but the wary publisher hesitated at paying such a price for the work of an unknown youth of twenty-three. He therefore showed the work to Pope, when the latter, having glanced over a few pages, said, "Don't be niggardly about the terms, for this is no every-day writer."

No sooner was it published than it excited great attention, and received general applause. But he could not reap from it "the means whereby to live," and he betook himself to the practice of his profession. He first settled in Northampton; but finding little encouragement there, he removed to Hampstead, and thence finally to London. Here he experienced the difficulty of getting into notice in a large city, and though he acquired several professional honors, he never obtained any large share of practice. He was busy in presenting himself to public notice, by publishing medical essays and observations, and delivering lectures, when his career was terminated by a putrid fever, on the 23d of January, 1770.

The Pleasures of the Imagination is written in blank verse, with great beauty of versification, elegance of language, and splendor of imagery. Its object is to trace the various pleasures which we receive from nature and art to their respective principles in the human imagination, and to show the connection of those principles with the moral dignity of man, and the final purposes of his creation.' This task Akenside has executed in a most admirable manner. If his philosophy be not always correct, his general ideas of moral truth are lofty and prepossessing. He is peculiarly eloquent in those passages in which he describes the final causes of our emotions of taste; he is equally skilful in delineating the processes of memory and association; and he gives an animating view of Genius collecting her stores for works of excellence. Of this poem Dr. Johnson remarks, "It has undoubtedly a just claim to a very particular notice, as an example of great felicity of genius, and uncommon amplitude of acquisitions, of a young mind stored with images, and much exercised in combining and comparing them. The subject is well chosen, as it includes all images that can strike or please, and thus comprises every species of poetical delight." He complains, however, with equal justice, of the poet's amplitude of language, in which his meaning is frequently obscured, and sometimes wholly buried.

In maturer life Akenside intended to revise and alter the whole poem, but he died before he had completed his design. The portion that he did "improve" is contracted in some parts and expanded in others; but if it be more philosophically correct, it is shorn of much of its beauty and poetic fire; and the original inspiration, under which he had written the work, does not appear to have been ready at his call.

Campbell's Specimens, vol. vi. p. 128.

Read Mrs. Barbauld's elegant Essay, prefixed to an edition of his poem, published in 1796; in which she characterizes his genius as lofty and elegant, chaste, classical, and correct.

INTRODUCTION. THE SUBJECT PROPOSED.

With what attractive charms this goodly frame
Of nature touches the consenting hearts
Of mortal men; and what the pleasing stores
Which beauteous imitation thence derives
To deck the poet's or the painter's toil;
My verse unfolds. Attend, ye gentle powers
Of musical delight! and while I sing

Your gifts, your honors, dance around my strain.
Thou, smiling queen of every tuneful breast,
Indulgent Fancy! from the fruitful banks
Of Avon, whence thy rosy fingers cull

Fresh flowers and dews to sprinkle on the turf
Where Shakspeare lies, be present: and with thee
Let Fiction come, upon her vagrant wings,
Wafting ten thousand colors through the air,
Which, by the glances of her magic eye,

She blends and shifts at will, through countless forms,
Her wild creation. Goddess of the lyre,
Which rules the accents of the moving sphere,
Wilt thou, eternal Harmony! descend,

And join this festive train? for with thee comes
The guide, the guardian of their lovely sports,
Majestic Truth; and where Truth deigns to come,
Her sister Liberty will not be far.

Be present, all ye genii, who conduct

The wandering footsteps of the youthful bard,
New to your springs and shades: who touch his ear
With finer sounds: who heighten to his eye

The bloom of nature; and before him turn
The gayest, happiest attitude of things.

Oft have the laws of each poetic strain
The critic-verse employ'd; yet still unsung
Lay this prime subject, though importing most
A poet's name: for fruitless is th' attempt,
By dull obedience and by creeping toil,
Obscure, to conquer the severe ascent
Of high Parnassus. Nature's kindling breath
Must fire the chosen genius; nature's hand
Must string his nerves, and imp his eagle-wings,
Impatient of the painful steep, to soar

High as the summit; there to breathe at large
Ethereal air; with bards and sages old,

Immortal sons of praise. These flattering scenes,
To this neglected labor court my song;
Yet not unconscious what a doubtful task
To paint the finest features of the mind,
And to most subtle and mysterious things

Give color, strength, and motion. But the love
Of nature and the muses bids explore,

Through secret paths erewhile untrod by man,
The fair poetic region, to detect

Untasted springs, to drink inspiring draughts,
And shade my temples with unfading flowers
Cull'd from the laureate vale's profound recess,
Where never poet gain'd a wreath before.

But not alike to every mortal eye

Is this great scene unveil'd. For since the claims Of social life, to different labors urge

The active powers of man; with wise intent
The hand of nature on peculiar minds
Imprints a different bias, and to each
Decrees its province in the common toil.
To some she taught the fabric of the sphere,
The changeful moon, the circuit of the stars,
The golden zones of heaven; to some she gave
To weigh the moment of eternal things,
Of time, and space, and fate's unbroken chain,
And will's quick impulse: others by the hand
She led o'er vales and mountains, to explore
What healing virtue swells the tender veins
Of herbs and flowers; or what the beams of morn
Draw forth, distilling from the clefted rind
In balmy tears. But some to higher hopes
Were destined; some within a finer mould
She wrought, and temper'd with a purer flame.
To these the Sire Omnipotent unfolds
The world's harmonious volume, there to read
The transcript of himself. On every part
They trace the bright impressions of his hand:
In earth or air, the meadow's purple stores,
The moon's mild radiance, or the virgin's form
Blooming with rosy smiles, they see portray'd
That uncreated beauty, which delights

The mind supreme. They also feel her charms,
Enamor'd; they partake th' eternal joy.

MAN'S IMMORTAL ASPIRATIONS.

Say, why was man so eminently raised
Amid the vast creation; why ordain'd
Through life and death to dart his piercing eye,
With thoughts beyond the limit of his frame;
But that th' Omnipotent might send him forth
In sight of mortal and immortal powers,
As on a boundless theatre, to run
The great career of justice; to exalt
His generous aim to all diviner deeds;

To chase each partial purpose from his breast,
And through the mists of passion and of sense,
And through the tossing tide of chance and pain,

To hold his course unfaltering, while the voice

Of truth and virtue, up the steep ascent

Of nature, calls him to his high reward,

Th' applauding smile of heaven? Else wherefore burns

In mortal bosoms this unquenched hope,

That breathes from day to day sublimer things,

And mocks possession? wherefore darts the mind,
With such resistless ardor, to embrace
Majestic forms; impatient to be free;
Spurning the gross control of wilful might;
Proud of the strong contention of her toils;
Proud to be daring? Who but rather turns
To heaven's broad fire his unconstrained view,
Than to the glimmering of a waxen flame?
Who that, from Alpine heights, his laboring eye
Shoots round the wild horizon, to survey

Nilus or Ganges rolling his bright wave

Through mountains, plains, through empires black with shade, And continents of sand; will turn his gaze

To mark the windings of a scanty rill

That murmurs at his feet? The high-born soul
Disdains to rest her heaven-aspiring wing
Beneath its native quarry. Tired of earth
And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft
Through fields of air; pursues the flying storm;
Rides on the volley'd lightning through the heavens;
Or, yoked with whirlwinds, and the northern blast,
Sweeps the long tract of day. Then high she soars
The blue profound, and hovering round the sun,
Beholds him pouring the redundant stream
Of light; beholds his unrelenting sway
Bend the reluctant planets to absolve

The fated rounds of time. Thence far effused,
She darts her swiftness up the long career
Of devious comets; through its burning signs
Exulting measures the perennial wheel
Of nature, and looks back on all the stars,
Whose blended light, as with a milky zone,
Invests the orient. Now amazed she views
Th' empyreal waste, where happy spirits hold,
Beyond this concave heaven, their calm abode;
And fields of radiance, whose unfading light
Has travell'd the profound six thousand years,
Nor yet arrives in sight of mortal things.
E'en on the barriers of the world untired
She meditates th' eternal depth below;
Till, half recoiling, down the headlong steep
She plunges; soon o'erwhelm'd and swallow'd up
In that immense of being. There her hopes
Rest at the fated goal. For from the birth
Of mortal man, the sovereign Maker said,
That not in humble nor in brief delight,