ODE TO FEAR.

speare:

"Hither again thy fury deal,

Teach me but once like him to feel:
His cypress wreath my meed decree,
And I, O Fear, will dwell with thee!"

In construction of this nervous ode the author has shown equal power of judgment and imagination. Nothing can be more striking than the violent and abrupt abbreviation of the measure in the fifth and sixth verses, when he feels the strong influence of the power he invokes :

"Ah, Fear, ah, frantic Fear!
I see, I see thee near."

The editor of these poems has met with nothing in the same species of poetry, either in his own, or in any other language, equal, in all respects, to the following description of Danger:

"Danger, whose limbs of giant mould,
What mortal eye can fix'd behold?
Who stalks his round, a hideous form,
Howling amidst the midnight storm,
Or throws him on the ridgy steep
Of some loose hanging rock to sleep."

It is impossible to contemplate the image conveyed in the two last verses without those emotions of terrour it was intended to excite. It has, moreover, the entire advantage of novelty to recommend it, for there is too much originality in all the circumstances, to suppose that the author had in his eye that description of the penal situation of Catiline in the ninth Æneid:

-Te, Catilina, minaci Pendentem scopulo.

The archetype of the English poet's idea was in Nature, and probably to her alone he was indebted for the thought. From her, likewise, he derived that magnificence of conception, that horrible grandeur of imagery, displayed in the following lines:

"And those, the fiends, who near allied, O'er Nature's wounds and wrecks preside; While Vengeance, in the lurid air, Lifts her red arm, expos'd and bare: On whom that ravening brood of Fate, Who lap the blood of Sorrow, wait." That nutritive enthusiasm, which cherishes the seeds of poetry, and which is, indeed, the only soil wherein they will grow to perfection, lays open the mind to all the influences of fiction. A passion for whatever is greatly wild, or magnificent in the works of Nature, seduces the imagination to attend to all that is extravagant, however unnatural. Milton was notoriously fond of high romance and Gothic diableries; and Collins, who in genius and enthusiasm bore no very distant resemblance to Milton, was wholly carried away by the same attachments. "Be mine to read the visions old, Which thy awakening bards have told: And, lest thou meet my blasted view, Hold each strange tale devoutly true."

"On that thrice hallow'd eve, &c."

There is an old traditionary superstition, that on St. Mark's eve the forms of all such persons as shall die within the ensuing year, make their solemn entry into the churches of their respective parishes, as St. Patrick swam over the channel, without their heads.

ODE TO SIMPLICITY.

THE measure of the ancient ballad seems to have been made choice of for this ode, on account of the subject, and it has, indeed, an air of simplicity not altogether unaffecting:

"By all the honey'd store

On Hybla's thymy shore,

By all her blooms, and mingled murmurs dear, By her whose love-lorn woe,

In evening musings slow,

Sooth'd sweetly sad Electra's poet's ear." This allegorical imagery of the honey'd store, the blooms, and mingled murmurs of Hybla, alluding to the sweetness and beauty of the Attic poetry, has the finest and the happiest effect: yet, possibly, it will bear a question, whether the ancient Greek tragedians had a general claim to simplicity in any thing more than the plans of their drama. Their language, at least, was infinitely metaphorical; yet it must be owned that they justly copied Nature and the passions, and so far, certainly, they were entitled to the palm of true simplicity: the following most beautiful speech of Polynices will be a monument of this so long as poetry shall last.

-πολυδακρυς δ' αφικομην χρονιος ιδων μέλαθρα, και βωμους Θεων, Γυμνασία θ', όισιν ενετράφην, Δίρκης θ' ύδωρο Ων ου δικαίως απελάθεις, ξένων πολιν Ναίω, δι' όσσον όμμ' έχων δακρυῤῥουν. Αλλ' (εκ γαρ αλγους αλγος) αν σε δερκομία, Καρα ξυρηκες, και πεπλου; μελαγχιμους EURIP. Phoeniss, ver. 369. Exousav.

"But staid to sing alone

To one distinguish'd throne."

The poet cuts off the prevalence of simplicity. among the Romans with the reign of Augustus; and, indeed, it did not continue much longer, most of the compositions, after that date, giving inte false and artificial ornament. •

"No more, in hall or bower, The passions own thy power,

Love, only Love, her forceless numbers mean," In these lines the writings of the Provençal poets are principally alluded to, in which simplicity is generally sacrificed to the rhapsodies of romantic

love.

ODE ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER.

Procul! O! procul este profani!

THIS ode is so infinitely abstracted and replete with high enthusiasm, that it will find few readers capable of entering into the spirit of it, or of relishing its beauties. There is a style of sentiment as utterly unintelligible to common capacities, as

sometimes, as in this place, it is given to the Isle of Man. Both those isles still retain much of the genius of superstition, and are now the only places where there is the least chance of finding a fairy.

O DE,

TO A LADY, ON THE DEATH OF COLONEL CHARLES ROSS IN THE ACTION AT FONTENOY. WRITTEN MAY, 1745.

THE iambic kind of numbers in which this ode is conceived, seems as well calculated for tender and plaintive subjects, as for those where strength or rapidity is required.-This, perhaps, is owing to the repetition of the strain in the same stanza; for sorrow rejects variety, and affects an uniformity of complaint. It is needless to observe that this ode is replete with harmony, spirit, and pathos; and there, surely, appears no reason why the seventh and eighth stanzas should be omitted in that copy .printed in Dodsley's Collection of Poems.

ODE TO EVENING.

THE blank ode has for some time solicited admission into the English poetry; but its efforts, hitherto, seem to have been vain, at least its reception has been no more than partial. It remains a question, then, whether there is not something in the nature of blank verse less adapted to the lyric than to the heroic measure, since, though it has been generally received in the latter, it is yet unadopted in the former. In order to discover this, we are to consider the different modes of these different species of poetry. That of the heroic is uniform; that of the lyric is various; and in these circumstances of uniformity and variety, probably, lies the cause why blank verse has been successful in the one, and unacceptable in the other. While it presented itself only in one form, it was familiarized to the ear by custom; but where it was obliged to assume the different shapes of the lyric Muse, it seemed still a stranger of uncouth figure, was received rather with curiosity than pleasure, and entertained without that ease, or satisfaction, which acquaintance and familiarity produce.Moreover, the heroic blank verse obtained a sanction of infinite importance to its general reception, when it was adopted by one of the greatest poets the world ever produced, and was made the vehicle of the noblest poem that ever was written. When this poem at length extorted that applause which ignorance and prejudice had united to withhold, the ⚫versification soon found its imitators, and became more generally successful than even in those countries from whence it was imported. But lyric blank verse had met with no such advantages; for Mr. Collins, whose genius and judgment in harmony might have given it so powerful an effect, hath left us but one specimen of it in the Ode to Evening.

In the choice of his measure he seems to have had in his eye Horace's Ode to Pyrrha; for this ode bears the nearest resemblance to that mixt kind of the asclepiad and pherecratic verse; and that resemblance in some degree reconciles us to the want of rhyme, while it reminds us of those great masters of antiquity, whose works had no need of this whimsical jingle of sounds.

From the following passage one might be in. duced to think that the poet had it in view to render his subject and his versification suitable to each other on this occasion, and that, when he addressed himself to the sober power of Evening, he had thought proper, to lay aside the foppery of rhyme :

[vale,

"Now teach me, maid compos'd, To breathe some soften'd strain, Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening May not unseemly with its stillness suit, As, musing slow, I hail Thy genial lov'd return !"

But whatever were the numbers, or the versification of this ode, the imagery and enthusiasm it contains could not fail of rendering it delightful. No other of Mr. Collins's odes is more generally characteristic of his genius. In one place we discover his passion for visionary beings:

"For when thy folding-star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant hours, and elves
Who slept in buds the day,

And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge,

And sheds the freshening dew, and lovelier still,
The pensive pleasures sweet
Prepare thy shadowy car."

In another we behold his strong bias to melancholy:

"Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene,
Gr find some ruin 'midst its dreary delis,
Whose walls more awful nod
By thy religious gleams."

Then appears his taste for what is wildly grand and magnificent in nature; when, prevented by storms from enjoying his evening walk, he wishes for a situation,

"That from the mountain's side Views wild and swelling floods;"

And, through the whole, his invariable attachment to the expression of painting:

66- and marks o'er all Thy dewy fingers draw The gradual dusky veil."

"Farewell the porch, whose roof is seen, Arch'd with th' enlivening olive's green: Where Science, prank'd in tissued vest, By Reason, Pride, and Fancy drest, Comes like a bride, so trim array'd, To wed with Doubt in Plato's shade!" When the mind goes in pursuit of visionary systems, it is not far from the regions of doubt; and the greater its capacity to think abstractedly, to reason and refae, the more it will be exposed to, and bewildered in, uncertainty.-From an enthusiastic warmth of temper, indeed, we may for a while be encouraged to persist in some favourite doctrine, or to adhere to some adopted system; but when that enthusiasm, which is founded on the vivacity of the passions, gradually cools and dies away with them, the opinions it supported drop from us, and we are thrown upon the inhospitable shore of doubt. -A striking proof of the necessity of some moral rule of wisdom and virtue, and some system of happiness established by unerring knowledge and unlimited power.

In the poet's address to Humour in this ode, there is one image of singular beauty and propriety. The ornaments in the hair of Wit are of such a nature, and disposed in such a manner, as to be perfectly symbolical and characteristic:

"Me too amidst thy band admit,

There where the young-ey'd healthful Wit (Whose jewels in his crisped hair Are plac'd each other's beams to share, Whom no delights from thee divide) In laughter loos'd attends thy side." Nothing could be more expressive of wit, which consists in a happy collision of comparative and relative images, than this reciprocal reflection of light from the disposition of the jewels.

"O Humour, thou whose name is known
To Britain's favour'd isle alone."

The author could only mean to apply this to the time when he wrote, since other nations had produced works of great humour, as he himself acknowledges afterwards.

It is very observable that though the measure is the same, in which the musical efforts of fear, anger, and despair, are described, yet by the variation of the cadence, the character and operation of each is strongly expressed: thus particularly of Despair :

"With woful measures wan Despair Low sullen sounds his grief beguild, A solemn, strange, and mingled air,

'T was sad by fits, by starts 't was wild." He must be a very unskilful composer who could not catch the power of imitative harmony from these lines!

The picture of Hope that follows this is beautiful almost beyond imitation. By the united powers of imagery and harmony, that delightful being is exhibited with all the charms and graces that pleasure and fancy have appropriated to her. Relegat, qui semel percurrit; Qui nunquam legit, legat. "But thou, O Hope, with eyes so fair, What was thy delighted measure! Still it whisper'd promis'd pleasure,

And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail! Still would her touch the strain prolong,

And from the rocks, the woods, the vale, She call'd on Echo still through all the song; And where her sweetest theme she chose, A soft responsive voice was heard at every close, And Hope enchanted smil'd, and way'd her golden

hair."

In what an exalted light does the above stanza place this great master of poetical imagery and harmony! what varied sweetness of numbers! what delicacy of judgment and expression! how characteristically does Hope prolong her strain, repeat her soothing closes, call upon her associate Echo for the same purposes, and display every pleasing grace peculiar to her!

"And Hope enchanted smil'd, and wav'd her golden hair."

Legat, qui nunquam legit;
Qui semel percurrit, relegat.

The descriptions of joy, jealousy, and revenge, are excellent; though not equally so; those of melancholy and cheerfulness are superior to every thing of the kind; and, upon the whole, there may be very little hazard in asserting that this is the finest ode in the English language.

AN EPISTLE

TO SIR THOMAS HANMER, ON HIS EDITION OF
SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS.

THIS poem was written by our author at the University, about the time when sir Thomas Hanmer's

Oxford. If it has not so much merit as the rest of his poems, it has still more than the subject deserves. The versification is easy and genteel, and the allusions always poetical. The character of

in this epistle.

DIRGE IN CYMBELINE.

ODE ON THE DEATH OF MR. THOMSON.

Mr. Collins had skill to complain. Of that mournful melody, and those tender images, which are the distinguishing excellencies of such pieces as bewail departed friendship, or beauty, he was an almost unequalled master. He knew perfectly to exhibit such circumstances, peculiar to the objects, as awaken the influences of pity; and while, from his own great sensibility, he felt what he wrote, he naturally addressed himself to the feelings of others.

emotions of pity, is surely impossible:

"The tender thought on thee shall dwell.
Each lonely scene shall thee restore,
For thee the tear be duly shed;
Belov'd, till life can charm no more;

And mourn'd, till Pity's self be dead." The ode on the death of Thomson seems to have been written in an excursion to Richmond by water. The rural scenery has a proper effect in an ode to the memory of a poet, much of whose merit lay in descriptions of the same kind; and the appellations of " Druid," and "meek Nature's child," are happily characteristic. For the better understanding of this ode, it is necessary to remember, that Mr. Thomson lies buried in the church of