Where these arife naturally out of the subject, as the description of a sheep-fhearing feast in DYER, or the praises of Italy in the Georgics, they are not only allowable but graceful; but if forced, as is the ftory of ORPHEUS and EURYDICE in the fame Poem, they can be confidered in no other light than that of beautiful monsters, and injure the piece they are meant to adorn. The subject of a Didactic Poem therefore ought to be such as is in itself attractive to the man of taste, for otherwise all attempts to make it so by adventitious ornaments, will be but like loading with jewels and drapery a figure originally defective and ill made.

Of all the subjects which have engaged the attention of Didactic Poets, there is not perhaps a happier than that made choice of by AKENSIDE, The Pleafures of Imagination; in which every step of the difquifition calls up objects of the moft attractive kind, and Fancy is made as it were to hold a mirror to her own charms. Imagination is the

very fource and well-head of Poetry, and nothing forced or foreign to the Mufe could easily flow from such a fubject. Accordingly we see that the author has kept close to his fyftem, and has admitted neither episode nor digreffion: the allegory in the second book, which is introduced for the purpofe of illuftrating his theory, being all that can properly be called ornament in this whole Poem. It must be acknowledged however, that engaging as his fubject is to minds prepared to examine it, to the generality of readers it must appear dry and abftrufe. It is a work which offers us entertainment, but not of that eafy kind amidst which the mind remains paffive, and has nothing to do but to receive impreffions. Those who have studied the metaphyfics of mind, and who are accustomed to investigate abftract ideas, will read it with a lively pleasure ; but those who seek mere amusement in a Poem, will find many far inferior ones better fuited to their purpose. The judicious admirer of

AKENSIDE will not call people from the fields and the highways to partake of his feaft; he will wifh none to read that are not capable of understanding him.

The ground-work of The Pleafures of Imagination is to be found in ADDISON'S Effays on the fame fubject, published in the Spectator. Except in the book which treats on Ridicule, and even of that the hint is there given, our author follows nearly the fame track; and he is indebted to them not only for the leading thoughts and grand divifion of his fubject, but for much of the colouring alfo: for the papers of ADDISON are wrought up with so much elegance of language, and adorned with so many beautiful illuftrations, that they are equal to the most finished Poem. Perhaps the obligations of the Poet to the Effay-writer are not fufficiently adverted to, the latter being only slightly mentioned in the preface to the Poem. It is not meant however to infinuate that AKENSIDE had not various

other fources of his ideas. He fat down to this

work, which was published at the early age of three and twenty, warm from the schools of ancient philofophy, whofe fpirit he had deeply imbibed, and full of enthusiasm for the treasures of Greek and Roman literature. The works of no author have a more claffic air than those of our Poet. His hymn to the Naïads fhews the moft intimate acquaintance with their mythology. Their laws, their arts, their liberty, were equally objects of his warm admiration, and are frequently referred to in various parts of his Poems. He was fond of the Platonic philofophy, and mingled with the fplendid vifions of the Academic school, ideas of the fair and beautiful in morals and in taste, gathered from the writings of SHAFTESBURY, HUTCHINSON, and others of that stamp, who then very much engaged the notice of the public. Educated in the univerfity of Edinburgh, he joined to his claffic literature, the keen discriminating spirit of metaphyfic in

quiry, and the taste for moral beauty which has fo much distinguished our northern feminaries, and which the celebrity of their profeffors and the genius of the place has never failed of communicating to their disciples. Thus prepared, by nature with genius, and by education with the previous studies and habits of thinking, he was peculiarly fitted for writing a philofophical Poem.

The first lines contain the definition of his fub

ject, which he has judiciously varied from his master ADDISON, who exprefly confines the pleasures of imagination to "fuch as arife from visible objects only;" and divides them into "the primary pleafures of the imagination, which entirely proceed from fuch objects as are before our eyes, and those fecondary pleasures of the imagination which flow from the ideas of visible objects when the objects are not actually before the eye, but are called up into our memories, or formed into agreeable vifions of things that are either absent or fictitious." This