words are multiplied till the fenfe is hardly perceived; attention deferts the mind, and fettles in the ear. The reader wanders through the gay diffufion, fometimes amazed, and fometimes delighted; but, after many turnings in the flowery labyrinth, comes out as he went in. He remarked little, and laid hold on nothing. To his verfification juftice requires that praise should not be denied. In the general fabrication of his lines he is perhaps fuperior to any other writer of blank verfe; his flow is smooth, and his pauses are musical; but the concatenation of his verfes is commonly too long continued, and the full clofe does not recur with fufficient frequency. The fense is carried on through a long intertexture of complicated clauses, and as nothing is diftinguished, nothing is remembered. The exemption which blank verse affords from the neceffity of clofing the fenfe with the couplet, betrays luxuriant and active minds into fuch indulgence, that they pile image upon image, ornament upon ornament, and are not easily perfuaded tò close the the fenfe at all. Blank verfe will therefore, I fear, be too often found in description exuberant, in argument loquacious, and in narration tiresome. not common. His diction is certainly fo far poetical as it is not profaick, and fo far valuable as it is He is to be commended as having fewer artifices of disgust than most of his brethren of the blank fong. He rarely either recalls old phrases or twists his metre into harfh inverfions. The fenfe however of his words is ftrained; when he views the Ganges from Alpine heights; that is, from mountains like the Alps. And the pedant furely intrudes, but when was blank verfe without pedantry? when he tells how Planets abfolve the ftated round of Time. It is generally known to the readers of poetry that he intended to revife and augment this work, but died before he had completed his defign. The reformed work as he left it, and the addition which he had made, are very properly retained in the late collection. He feems to have fomewhat contracted his diffufion; but I know not whether he has gained in closeness what he has loft in fplendor. In the additional book, the Tale of Solon is too long. His other poems are now to be confidered; but a fhort confideration will dispatch them. It is not eafy to guess why he addicted himself fo diligently to lyrick poetry, having neither the cafe and airiness of the lighter, nor the vehemence and elevation of the grander ode. When he lays his ill-fated hand upon his harp, his former powers seem to defert him; he has no longer his luxuriance of expreffion, nor variety of images. His thoughts are cold, and his words inelegant. Yet fuch was his love of lyricks, that, having written with great vigour and poignancy his Epistle to Curio, he transformed it afterwards into an ode difgraceful only to its author. Of his odes nothing favourable can be faid; the fentiments commonly want force, nature, or novelty; the diction is fometimes harfh and uncouth, the ftanzas ill-conftructed and unpleasant, and the rhymes diffonant, or unfkilfully difpofed, too diftant from each other, 3 other, or arranged with too little regard to established use, and therefore perplexing to the ear, which in a short compofition has not time to grow familiar with an innovation. To examine fuch compofitions fingly, cannot be required; they have doubtless brighter and darker parts: but when they are once found to be generally dull, all further labour may be fpared; for to what use can the work be criticised that will not be read? GRAY, |