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yet, after naming Milton, and Shakspeare, and Spenser, and Chaucer, if we were compelled to assign the fifth place to some one, we know not to whom it would be, if not to Thomas Gray. There are in the poems that he has left us, few though they be, such a perfect finish of language, such felicity of ex pression, such richness and harmony of numbers, and such beauty and sublimity of thought and imagination, as to place him decidedly at the head of all English lyric poets. True, Collins comes next, and sometimes approaches him almost within a hair's-breadth: but after all there is distance between them, and that distance is generally clearly perceptible. Of the "Bard" and "The Progress of Poesy," Mr. Matthias justly observes, "There is not another ode in the English language which is constructed like these two compositions; with such power, such majesty, and such sweetness, with such proportioned pauses and just cadences, with such regulated measures of the verse, with such master principles of lyrical art displayed and exemplified, and, at the same time, with such a concealment of the difficulty, which is lost in the softness and uninterrupted flowing of the lines in each stanza, with such a musical magic, that every verse in it in succession dwells on the ear, and harmonizes with that which has gone before."

As a man, he had great benevolence of feeling, the strictest principles of virtue, and the most unbending integrity.' As an instance of the strictness of his principles, he once made it his particular request to a friend who was going to the continent, that he would not pay a visit to Voltaire; and when his friend replied, "What can a visit from a person like me to him signify?" he rejoined, with peculiar earnestness, "Sir, every tribute to such a man signifies." If such sentiments were more generally felt and acted on, men of elevated positions would not so often presume upon their talents, or eloquence, or learning, as being a sufficient covering for their moral deficiencies.

THE PROGRESS OF POESY.

I. 1.

Awake, Æolian lyre, awake,2

And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon's harmonious springs 3

A thousand rills their mazy progress take:
The laughing flowers, that round them blow,
Drink life and fragrance as they flow.

1 "His faculties were endowed with uncommon strength; he thought with a manly nervousness ; and he penetrated forcibly into every subject which engaged his attention. But his petty manners were disagreeably effeminate and fastidious; his habits wanted courage and hardiness; and his temper and spirits were a prey to feebleness, indolence, and trivial derangements. His heart was pure; and his conduct, I firmly believe, stained with no crime. He loved virtue for its own sake, and felt a just and never slackened indignation at vice.”—Sir Egerton Brydges, "Censura Literaria," vili. 217. Read, also, a well-sustained and most interesting dialogue between Gray and Walpole in the same author's "Imaginative Biography." Read, also, Drake's "Literary Hours," 3 vols.—a most fuscinat ing work.

2 Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp.—Psalm lvii. 8.

8 The subject and simile, as usual with Pindar, are united. The various sources of poetry, which gives life and lustre to all it touches, are here described; its quiet majestic progress enriching every subject (otherwise dry and barren) with a pomp of diction and luxuriant harmony of numbers; and its more rapid and irresistible course, when swollen and hurried away by the conflict of tumultuous passions.

Now the rich stream of music winds along,

Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong,

Through verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign:
Now rolling down the steep amain

Headlong, impetuous, see it pour:

The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar.

I. 2.

Oh! Sovereign of the willing soul,'

Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,
Enchanting shell! the sullen Cares

And frantic Passions hear thy soft control.
On Thracia's hills the Lord of War
Has curb'd the fury of his car,

And dropp'd his thirsty lance at thy command.
Perching on the sceptred hand

Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather'd king
With ruffled plumes and flagging wing:
Quench'd in dark clouds of slumber lie

The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his eye.

I. 3.

Thee the voice, the dance, obey,2

Temper'd to thy warbled lay.

O'er Idalia's velvet green

The rosy-crowned Loves are seen

On Cytherea's day;

With antic Sport, and blue-eyed Pleasures,
Frisking light in frolic measures;

Now pursuing, now retreating,

Now in circling troops they meet:

To brisk notes in cadence beating,

Glance their many-twinkling feet.

Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare:
Where'er she turns, the Graces homage pay.

With arms sublime, that float upon the air,

In gliding state she wins her easy way:

O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move

The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.

II. 1.

Man's feeble race, what ills await,3

Labor, and Penury, the racks of Pain,

Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train,

And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate!
The fond complaint, my song, disprove,

And justify the laws of Jove.

Say, has he given in vain the heavenly Muse?
Night, and all her sickly dews,

1 Power of harmony to calm the turbulent sallies of the soul. The thoughts are borrowed from the first Pythian of Pindar.

2 Power of harmony to produce all the graces of motion in the body.

8 To compensate the real and imaginary ills of life, the Muse was given to mankind by the same Providence that sendr the day, by its cheerful presence, to dispel the gloom and terrors of the night.

Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry,

He gives to range the dreary sky;

Till down the eastern cliffs afar1

Hyperion's march they spy, and glittering shafts of war,

II. 2.

In climes beyond the solar road,2

Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,

The Muse has broke the twilight-gloom

To cheer the shivering Native's dull abode.

And oft, beneath the odorous shade

Of Chili's boundless forests laid,

She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat,

In loose numbers wildly sweet,

Their feather-cinctured chiefs, and dusky loves.
Her track, where'er the goddess roves,

Glory pursue, and generous shame,

Th' unconquerable mind, and Freedom's holy flame.

II. 3.

Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep,3
Isles, that crown th' Ægean deep,
Fields that cool Ilissus laves,

Or where Mæander's amber waves
In lingering labyrinths creep,

How do your tuneful echoes languish
Mute, but to the voice of anguish ?
Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breath'd around;
Every shade and hallow'd fountain

Murmur'd deep a solemn sound:

Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour,

Left their Parnassus, for the Latian plains.
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power

And coward Vice, that revels in her chains.
When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,

They sought, oh Albion! next thy sea-encircled coast.

III. 1.

Far from the sun and summer-gale,

In thy green lap was Nature's 4 Darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon stray'd,

To him the mighty mother did unveil

Her awful face: The dauntless child

Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smiled.

"This pencil take," she said, "whose colors clear
Richly paint the vernal year:

1 or seen the morning's well-appointed star

Come marching up the eastern hills afar.-Cowley.

* Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest and most uncivilized nations: its connec tion with liberty, and the virtues that naturally attend on it.

2 Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England. Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writings of Dante, or of Petrarch. The Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, had travelled in Italy, and formed their taste there; Spenser imitated the Italian writers; Milton improved on them; but this school expired soon after the Restoration, and a new one ose on the French model, which has subsisted ever since. 4 Shakspeare

1 Milton.

Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy!
This can unlock the gates of joy;

Of horror that, and thrilling fears,

Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears."
III. 2.

Nor second He,1 that rode sublime

Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy,

The secrets of th' abyss to spy.

He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time:
The living Throne, the sapphire-blaze,

Where angels tremble while they gaze,

He saw: but, blasted with excess of light,

Closed his eyes in endless night.

Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car,

Wide o'er the fields of glory bear

Two coursers of ethereal race,3

With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace.

III. 3.

Hark, his hands the lyre explore!

Bright-eyed Fancy, hovering o'er,

Scatters from her pictured urn

Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.5

But ah! 'tis heard no more

Oh! Lyre divine, what daring spirit

Wakes thee now? Though he inherit

Nor the pride, nor ample pinion,
That the Theban eagle bear,
Sailing with supreme dominion

Through the azure deep of air:

Yet oft before his infant eyes would run
Such forms, as glitter in the Muse's ray

With orient hues, unborrow'd of the sun:

Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way

Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate,

Beneath the Good how far-but far above the Great.

THE BARD.7

I. 1.

"Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!8

Confusion on thy banners wait!

2 "For the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels-and above the firmament, that was over their heads, was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire-stone.-This was the appearance of the glory of the Lord."-Ezekiel 1. 20, 26, 28.

8 Meant to express the stately march and sounding energy of Dryden's rhymes.

4"Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder "-Job.

"Words that weep, and tears that speak.”—Cowley.

• Pindar compares himself to that bird, and his enemies to ravens that croak and clamor in vain below. while it pursues its flight, regardless of their noise.

7 This ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales, that Edward the First, when he completed the conquest of that country, ordered all the bards that fell into his hands to be put to death. "Over this inimitable ode a tinge so wildly awful, so gloomily terrific, is thrown, as without any exception to place it at the head of lyric poetry."-Drake's Literary Hours.

• "This abrupt execration plunges the reader into that sudden, fearful perplexity which is designed

Though fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,'
Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!"
Such were the sounds, that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side?

He wound with toilsome march his long array.
Stout Glo'ster stood aghast in speechless trance:3

"To arms!" cried Mortimer, and couch'd his quivering lance.

1. 2.

On a rock, whose haughty brow 5
Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe,

With haggard eyes the Poet stood;
(Loose his beard, and hoary hair

Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air;7)
And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.

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'Hark, how each giant oak, and desert cave,

Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath!

O'er thee, oh King! their hundred arms they wave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;
Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day,

To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay."

8

to predominate through the whole. The irresistible violence of the prophet's passions bears t away, who, as he is unprepared by a formal ushering in of the speaker, is unfortified against the impressions of his poetical frenzy, and overpowered by them, as sudden thunders strike the deepest. All readers of taste, I fancy, have felt this effect from the passage; they will be pleased, however, to see their own feelings so well expressed as they are in this note."—Mason.

1 The hauberk was a texture of steel ringlets, or rings interwoven, forming a coat of mail, that sat close to the body, and adapted itself to every motion.

2 Snowdon was a name given by the Saxons to that mountainous tract which the Welsh themselves call Craigian-eryrie: it included all the highlands of Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire, as far east as the river Conway.

3 Gilbert de Clare, surnamed the Red, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, son-in-law to King Edward. 4 Edmond de Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore. They both were Lords Marchers, whose lands lay on the borders of Wales, and probably accompanied the king in this expedition.

6 "The turbulent impetuosity of the preceding stanza, and the sedate majesty of this, form a most pleasing and animated contrast."— Wakefield.

• The image was taken from a well-known picture of Raphael, representing the Supreme Being in the vision of Ezekiel: there are two of these paintings, both believed to be originals; one at Fiorence, the other in the Duke of Orleans' collection at Paris.

7 "Who forthwith from the glittering stair unfurl'd
The imperial ensign, which full high advanced,
Shone, like a meteor, streaming to the wind."

Paradise Lost, 1. 535.

8 "Hoel," observes Mr. Mitford, "is called high-born, as being the son of Owen Gwynedd, prince

of North Wales." Llewellyn's poetry, we are told, was characterized by his countrymen

lay, and the Bard is himself styled the tender-hearted prince.

Dr. Evans mentions Cadwallo and Urien among those bards of whom no works remain.

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