- Th' old drudging Sun, from his long beaten way, Shall at thy voice ftart, and mifguide the day. The jocund orbs fhall break their mea fur'd pace, And ftubborn Poles change their al lotted place. Heaven's gilded troops fhall flutter here and there, Leaving their boafting fongs tun'd to a fphere. Every reader feels himself weary with this useless talk of an allegorical Being. It is not only when the events are confeffedly miraculous, that fancy and fiction lose their effect: the whole system of of life, while the Theocracy was yet vifible, has an appearance fo different from all other scenes of human action, that the reader of the Sacred Volume habitually confiders it as a peculiar mode of existence of a diftinct fpecies of mankind, that lived and acted with manners uncommunicable; fo that it is difficult even for imagination to place us in the ftate of them whofe story is related, and by confequence their joys and griefs are not cafily adopted, nor' can the attention be often interested in any thing that befals them. To the fubject, thus originally indif posed to the reception of poetical embellishments, the writer brought little that could reconcile impatience, or at tract curiofity. Nothing can be more difgufting than a narrative fpangled with conceits, and conceits are all that the Davideis fupplies. One of the great fources of poetical delight is defcription, or the power of prefenting pictures to the mind. Cowley gives inferences inftead of images, and fhews not what may be supposed to have been seen, but what thoughts the fight might have fuggefted. When Virgil describes the ftone which Turnus lifted against Æneas, he fixes the attention on its bulk and weight: Saxum circumfpicit ingens, Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo qui forte jacebat, Limes egro pofitus, litem ut difcerneret arvis. Cowley fays of the ftone with which Cain flew his brother, I faw him fling the ftone, as if he meant At once his murther and his monument. Of the fword taken from Goliah, he fays, A fword fo great, that it was only fit To cut off his great head that came with it. Other poets deferibe death by fome of its common appearances; Cowley fays, with a learned allufion to fepulchral lamps real or fabulous, 'Twixt his right ribs deep pierc'd the furious blade, And open'd wide thofe fecret vessels where Life's light goes out, when firft they let in air. But he has allufions vulgar as well as learned, kings: Joas at firft does bright and glorious show, In life's fresh morn his fame does early crow. Defcribing an undifciplined army, after having faid with elegance, His forces feem'd no army, but a crowd Heartless, unarm'd, diforderly, and loud; he |