GRAY's Poetry is now to be confidered; and I hope not to be looked on as an enemy to his name, if I confefs that I contemplate it with lefs pleasure than his life.

His ode on Spring has fomething poetical, both in the language and the thought; but the language is too luxuriant, and the thoughts have nothing new. There has of late arifen a practice of giving to adjectives, derived from fubftantives, the termination of participles; fuch as the cultured plain, the dafied bank; but I was forry to fee, in the lines of a scholar like Gray, the bonied Spring. The morality is natural, but too ftale; the conclufion is pretty.

The poem on the Cat was doubtless by its author confidered as a trifle, but it is not a happy trifle. In the firft ftanza the azure flowers that blow, fhew refolutely a rhyme is fometimes made when it cannot easily be found. Selima, the Cat, is called a nymph, with fome violence both to language and fenfe; but there is good ufe made of it when it is done; for of the two lines,

What

What female heart can gold defpise?

What cat's averse to fish?

the first relates merely to the nymph, and the fecond only to the cat. The fixth ftanza contains a melancholy truth, that a favourite bas no friend; but the last ends in a pointed fentence of no relation to the purpofe; if what gliftered had been gold, the cat would not have gone into the water; and, if she had, would not lefs have been drowned.

The Profpect of Eton College fuggests nothing to Gray, which every beholder does not equally think and feel. His fupplication to father Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop or toffes the ball, is useless and puerile. Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself. His epithet buxom health is not elegant; he seems not to understand the word. Gray thought his language. more poetical as it was more remote from common ufe: finding in Dryden honey redolent of Spring, an expreffion that reaches the utmost limits of our language, Gray drove it a little more beyond common apprehenfion, by making gales to be redolent of joy and youth.

of

Of the Ode on Adverfity, the hint was at first taken from O Diva, gratum quæ regis Antium; but Gray has excelled his original by the variety of his fentiments, and by their moral application. Of this piece, at once poetical and rational, I will not by flight objections violate the dignity.

My procefs has now brought me to the wonderful Wonder of Wonders, the two Sifter Odes; by which, though either vulgar ignorance or common sense at first universally rejected them, many have been fince perfuaded to think themselves delighted. I am one of thofe that are willing to be pleased, and therefore would gladly find the meaning of the first stanza of the Progrefs of Poetry.

Gray feems in his rapture to confound the images of spreading found and running water. A ftream of mufick may be allowed; but where does Mufick, however fmooth and strong, after having vifited the verdant vales, rowl down the steep amain, fo as that rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar? If this be faid of Mufick, it is nonfenfe; if it be faid of Water, it is nothing to the purpose.

The

The second stanza, exhibiting Mars's car and Jove's eagle, is unworthy of further no-tice. Criticism difdains to chafe a fchoolboy to his common places.

To the third it may likewise be objected, that it is drawn from Mythology, though fuch as may be more eafily affimilated to real life. Idalia's velvet-green has fomething of cant. An epithet or metaphor drawn from Nature ennobles Art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from Art degrades Nature. Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily compounded. Many-twinkling was formerly cenfured as not analogical; we may say many-spotted, but fcarcely many-spotting. This ftanza, however, has fomething pleasing.

Of the second ternary of stanzas, the first endeavours to tell fomething, and would have told it, had it not been crossed by Hyperion: the fecond defcribes well enough the univerfal prevalence of Poetry; but I am afraid that the conclufion will not rife from the premises. The caverns of the North and the plains of Chili are not the refidences

of Glory and generous Shame. But that Poetry and Virtue go always together is an opinion fo pleafing, that I can forgive him who refolves to think it true.

The third stanza founds big with Delphi, and Egean, and Iliffus, and Meander, and hallowed fountain and folemn found; but in all Gray's odes there is a kind of cumbrous fplendor which we wish away. His pofition is at laft falfe: in the time of Dante and Petrarch, from whom he derives our first fchool of Poetry, Italy was over-run by tyrant power and coward vice; nor was our state much better when we first borrowed the Italian arts.

Of the third ternary, the firft gives a mythological birth of Shakspeare. What is faid of that mighty genius is true; but it is not faid happily: the real effects of this poetical power are put out of fight by the pomp of machinery. Where truth is fufficient to fill the mind, fiction is worse than ufelefs; the connterfeit debafes the genuine.

His account of Milton's blindness, if we fuppofe it caused by study in the formation of