Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whofe paftime

Is to make midnight mushrooms; that rejoice
To hear the folemn curfew; by whofe aid

(Weak masters tho' ye be) I have bedimm'd

The noon-tide fun, call'd forth the mutinous winds
And 'twixt the green-sea and the azur'd vault
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
Have I giv'n fire, and rifted Jove's flout oak
With his own bolt: the ftrong-bas'd promontory
Have I made shake, and by the fpurs pluckt up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have wak'd their fleepers; op'd, and let them forth,
By my fo potent art,

Here are agreeably fummed up the po pular stories concerning the power of magicians. The incantations of the witches in Macbeth are more folemn and terrible than those of the Erichtho of Lucan, or of the Canidia of Horace. It may be faid, indeed, that Shakespear had an advantage derived from the more direful character of his national fuperftitions.

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A celebrated writer in his ingenious letters on chivalry, has obferved, that the Gothic manners, and Gothic fuperftitions, are more adapted to the uses of poetry, than the Grecian. The devotion of those times was gloomy and fearful, not being purged of the terrors of the Celtic fables. The priest often availed himself of the dire inventions of his predeceffor, the Druid. The church of Rome adopted many of the Celtic fuperftitions; others, which were not established by it as points of faith, ftill maintained a traditional authority among the vulgar. Climate, temper, modes of life, and institutions of government, seem all to have confpired to make the superstitions of the Celtic nations melancholy and terrible. Philofophy had not mitigated the aufterity of ignorant devotion, or tamed the fierce spirit of enthusiasm. As the bards, who were our philofophers and poets, pretended to be poffeffed of the dark fecrets of magic and divination, they certainly encouraged the ignorant credulity, and anxious fears, to which fuch impof

tures

tures owe their fuccefs and credit. The retired and gloomy fcenes appointed for the most folemn rites of devotion; the aufterity and rigour of druidical difcipline and jurifdiction; the fafts, the the fafts, the penances, the

fad excommunications from the comforts and privileges of civil life; the dreadful anathema, whose vengeance pursued the wretched beyond the grave, which bounds all human power and mortal jurisdiction, muft deeply imprint on the mind all those forms of fuperftition fuch an hierarchy prefented. The bard, who was fubfervient to the druid, had mixed them in his heroic fong; in his historical annals; in his medical practice genii affifted his heroes; dæmons decided the fate of the battle; and charms cured the fick, or the wounded. After the confecrated groves were cut down, and the temples demolished, the tales that fprung from thence were ftill preserved with religious reverence in the minds of the people.

The poet found himself happily fituated ami dft

amidst enchantments, ghofts, goblins; every element supposed the refidence of a kind of deity; the genius of the mountain, the spirit of the floods, the oak endued with facred prophecy, made men walk abroad with a fearful apprehenfion

Of powers unfeen, and mightier far than they. On the mountains, and in the woods, stalked the angry spectre; and in the gayest and most pleasing scenes, even within the cheerful haunts of men, amongst villages and farms,

Tripp'd the light fairies and the dapper elves.

The reader will eafily perceive what refources remained for the poet in this vifionary land of ideal forms. The general fcenery of nature, confidered as inanimate, only adorns the defcriptive part of poetry; but being, according to the Celtic traditions, animated by a kind of intelligences, the bard could better make use of them for his moral purposes. That awe of the immediate presence of the deity, which, among the rest of the vulgar, is confined to temples and altars, was here diffufed over every object,

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object. They paffed trembling through the woods, and over the mountain, and by the lakes, inhabited by thefe invifible powers; fuch apprehenfions must indeed

Deepen the murmur of the falling floods,

And shed a browner horror on the woods;

give fearful accents to every whisper of the animate or inanimate creation, and arm every fhadow with terrors.

With great reason, therefore, it was afferted, that the western bards had advantage over Homer in the fuperftitions of their country. The religious ceremonies of Greece were more pompous than folemn; and feemed as much a part of their civil inftitutions, as belonging to fpiritual matters: nor did they impress so deep a sense of invifible beings, and prepare the mind to catch the enthusiasm of the poet, and to receive with veneration the phantoms he presented.

Our countryman has another fuperiority over the Greek poets, even the earliest of them, who, having imbibed the learning of myfterious