equalled Young in the strength and brilliancy which he imparts to those sentiments which are fundamental to his design. He presents them in every possible shape, enforces them by every imaginable argument, sometimes compresses them into a maxim, sometimes expands them into a sentence of rhetoric, sets them off by contrast, and illustrates them by similitude. It has already been observed, in speaking of his Satires, how much he abounds in antithesis. This work is quite overrun with them; they often occupy several successive lines; and while some strike with the force of lightning, others idly gleam like a meteor. It is the same with his other figures: some are almost unrivalled in sublimity; many are to be admired for their novelty and ingenuity; many are amusing only by their extravagance. It was the author's aim to say every thing wittily; no wonder, therefore, that he has often strayed into the paths of false wit. It is one of his characteristics to run a thought quite out of breath;

breath; so that what was striking at the commencement, is rendered flat and tiresome by amplification. Indeed, without this talent of amplifying, he could never have produced a work of the length of the Night Thoughts from so small a stock of fundamental ideas.

I cannot foresee how far the vivacity of his style, and the frequent recurrence of novel and striking conceptions, will lead you on through a performance which, I believe, appears tedious to most readers before they arrive at the termination. Some of the earlier books will afford you a complete specimen of his manner, and furnish with some of his finest passages. You will, doubtless, not stop short of the third book, entitled "Narcissa," the theme of which he characterises as

you

Soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair.

It will show you the author's powers in the pathetic, where the topic called them forth to the fullest exertion; and you will probably

probably find that he has mingled too much fancy and playfulness with his grief, to render it highly affecting.

The versification of Young is entirely modelled by his style of writing. That being pointed, sententious, and broken into short detached clauses, his lines almost constantly are terminated with a pause in the sense, so as to preclude all the varied and lengthened melody of which blank verse is capable. Taken singly, however, they are generally free from harshness, and sometimes are eminently musical.

I now dismiss you from your long attendance on the poets of this class, and re

main

Your truly affectionate, &c.

LETTER

LETTER XIV.

In restoring you, my dear Mary, to the company of those writers who have cultivated English poetry in what is generally deemed its most pleasing and perfect form, it is my intention without delay to enlarge your acquaintance with different modes of versification, and to familiarize your ear with those specimens of it which have proved most agreeable to refined judges.

We will begin with a poet who has employed more art and study in his compositions than almost any other; in consequence of which they are few, but exquisite in their kind. This is GRAY, a man of extensive erudition and highly cultured taste, whose place is generally assigned among the lyrical writers, though his cast of genius would have enabled him to attain equal

LYRIC POETRY:-GRAY.

185

equal excellence in any other form of elevated poetry.

The "Odes" of Gray are pieces of great diversity both with respect to subject and manner. The "Ode on Spring," and that "On a distant Prospect of Eton College," unite description with moral reflection. In the first of these the imagery has little novelty, but is dressed in all the splendour and elegance of poetical diction. You will remark the happy choice of picturesque epithets in such instances as "peopled air,' "busy murmur," "honied spring," &c. in which a whole train of ideas is excited in the mind by a single word. The second is new in its subject, and the picture it draws of the amusements and character of the puerile age is very interesting. Yet the concluding imagery of the fiends of vice and misfortune, watching in ambush to seize the thoughtless victims on their entrance into life, presents one of the gloomiest views of human kind that the imagination ever formed.

The