Still gleams and ftill expires the cloudy day

Of genuine Poetry.

The genius of the one was clouded over with the deepest glooms of Calvinism, to which system however he owed some of his moft ftriking beauties. The religion of the other, all at least that appears of it, and all indeed that could with propriety appear in fuch a Poem, is the purest Theism: liberal, cheerful, and fublime; or, if admitting any mixture, he seems inclined to tincture it with the mysticifm of PLATO, and the gay fables of ancient mythology. The one declaims against infidels, the other against monks, the one resembles the Gothic, the other the Grecian architecture, the one has been read with deep interest by many who, when they have abandoned the tenets of orthodoxy can scarcely bear to re-peruse him; the other, dealing more in general truths, will always be read with pleasure, though he will never make fo deep an impreffion.

The Poem goes on to trace the connection of beauty with truth, by fhewing that all the beauty

we admire in vegetable or animal life refults from the fitness of the object to the ufe for which it is intended, and serves as a kind of ftamp fet by the Creator to point out the health, foundness, and perfection of the form in which it refides. This leads him on to speak of moral beauty, and tracing the regular gradations of beauty through colour, shape, fymmetry, and grace, to its highest character in the expreffion of moral feelings, he breaks out into an animated apoftrophe,

Mind, mind alone-the living fountain in itself

contains

Of beauteous or fublime.

The Poem continues in a high ftrain of noble enthusiasm to the end of the book, and concludes with an invocation to the genius of ancient Greece, with whose philosophy and high sense of liberty he was equally enamoured. It is eafy for the reader who is converfant in the writings of SHAFTESBURY and HUTCHINSON to perceive how much their elegant and fascinating fyftem is adapted to ennoble our

author's fubject, and how much the Pleafures of Imagination are raised in value and importance by building the throne of virtue so near the bower of beauty. This book is complete in itself; and if we may be allowed to hazard a conjecture, contains nearly the whole of what the author on the first view might think neceffary to his subject.

The second book opens with a complaint, founded perhaps rather in a partiality for the ancients, than attention to fact, of the difunion in modern times of Philofophy and Poetry. To the fame claffic prejudice (to which a good scholar is very prone) may be attributed the mention of the courtly compliments which debased the verfe of TASSO: and the fuperftitious legends which employed the pencil of RAPHAEL in contradistinction to the works of the ancients, as if, in fober truth, any one was prepared to affert that there was lefs flattery in the Auguftan age, and less superstition in the idle mythology of HOMER and OVID. Such prejudices

C

ought to be laid afide with the gradus of the schoolboy. The Poet proceeds to confider the acceffion to the Pleasures of the Imagination from adventitious circumstances, of which he gives various instances: that of the Newtonian theory of the rainbow seems too abftrufe even for a philofophical Poem; it may be doubted whether, if understood, it is of a nature to mix well with the pleasure of colours; it certainly does not accord well with that of verse. The influence of Paffion is next confidered, and the mysterious pleasure which is mixed with the energies and emotions of those passions that are in their own nature painful. To folve this problem, which has been one in all ages, a long allegory is introduced, which, though wrought up with a good deal of the decoration of Poetry, is nearly as difficult to comprehend as the problem itself. It begins with presenting a scene of defolation where the parched adder dies; this vanishes, and another is presented. What we hoped to have heard from the Poet, we

are directed to learn from old HARMODIUS. HARMODIUS is only introduced to refer us to the Genius, and the Genius fhifts his scenes like the pictures of a magic lantern, before he explains to us the scope and purport of the vifions. The figures of Pleasure and Virtue are in a good measure copied from the choice of HERCULES, only that, as EUPHROSYNE is the Goddess of innocent pleasure, every thing voluptuous is left out of the picture. The defcription of the fon of NEMESIS is wrought up with much ftrength of colouring. The ftory is in fact the introduction of evil, accounted for by the neceffity of training the pupil of Providence to the love of Virtue, the fupreme good, by withdrawing from him for a while the allurements of pleasure ; but why his very fuffering fhould be attended with pleasure, which was the phenomenon to be accounted for, is not so clearly made out. We are told indeed that the youth is willing to bear the frowns of the fon of NEMESIS in all their horrors, provided