The seventh stanza is the most objectionable of the pocm: in the first and the second, the thought which, at the first glance, might seem to require defence, is certainly correct: in the first indeed it is beautifully poetic. When the poet asks whether the object of his lamentation were

that JUST MAID, who once before Forsook the hated earth, &c.

and when he says,

And thou, the mother of so sweet a child,
HER false imagined loss cease to lament, &c.

it is rather strange that both Tickell and Fenton should call this fair infant the NEPHEW of our author.

In the ode "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," written after an interval of four years, we trace the flight of a more powerful fancy, and distinguish beauties of a superior order mingled with defects perhaps of a greater magnitude. It discloses indeed in most of its parts the vicious taste of the age; but even where it is most erroneous it discloses also the power of the poet. The fourth

Moved with the heavens' majestic pace:

Or call'd to more superior bliss,

Thou tread'st with Seraphim the dread abyss, &c.

stanza of the hymn is the offspring, at once, of correct judgment and of strong imagination; and its merit is not lessened by the intrusion of a thought or a word which the nicest critic would wish to be expelled.

No war or battle's sound

Was heard the world around:

The idle spear and shield were high uphung.

The hooked chariot stood,

Unstain'd with hostile blood:

The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sate still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sovrain Lord was nigh.

The following stanza is not quite so unexceptionable and pure; but its errors are venial, and it closes beautifully

*Who now hath quite forgot to rave,

While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

The thirteen succeeding stanzas are disfigured by numerous conceits: but from the nineteenth,

The oracles are dumb, &c.

to the conclusion of the ode, we are struck with the most forcible exhibition of the highest poetry. In the course of these nine stanzas we may perhaps be inclined to object to a few accidendal words; but we cannot withhold our wonder from that vigour of concep

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tion which has breathed a soul into the painting, and placed it in warm and strenuous animation before our eyes. On the topic of this superior composition, we may further remark the deep knowledge which it discovers; and may point admiration to the masterly hand with which the poet has thrown the rich mantle of his fancy over the curious erudition of the scholar.

Besides these two little poems, which have been selected only as instances of the progress of our author's English Muse, he produced some other small pieces of poetry in his native language, which are all distinguished by beauties and faults and discover strong power with an unformed taste. When, in the verses written "At a solemn Music," we read the following lines, where, speaking of the wedded sounds of the harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse, the young poet says that they are

Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce,
And to our high-raised phantasy present

That undisturbed song of pure concent,

Ay sung before the sapphire-colour'd throne,

To Him that sits thereon,

With saintly shout and solemn jubilee:
Where the bright Seraphim in burning row,
And the cherubic host in thousand quires
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires, &c.

we acknowledge some touches prelusive to the Paradise Lost; and the following passage of the "Vacation Exercise," in which he personifies and addresses his native language, may be regarded as intimating a faint and doubtful promise of that divine poem:

Yet I would rather, if I were to choose,
Thy service in some graver subject use;

Such as may make thee search thy coffers round,
Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound:
Such where the deep transported mind may soar
Above the wheeling poles, and at heaven's door
Look in and see each blissful Deity,

How he before the thunderous throne doth lie, &c.

But whatever emanations of genius may throw a light over his English poems, composed at this early stage of his life, there is much in all these pieces to be regretted and pardoned by the correct and classical reader. To his Latin poems however, of the same date, no such observation is in any degree applicable. Immediately conversant with the great masters of composition, he adopts their taste with their language; and, with the privilege as with the ease of a native, assumes his station in their ranks. For fluency and sweetness of numbers, for command and purity of expression, for variety and correctness of imagery, we shall look in vain for his equal among the Latin poets of his age

and his country. May, the continuator and imitator of Lucan; and Cowley,' whose taste and thought are English and metaphysical while his verse walks upon Roman feet, will never, as I am confident, be placed in competition with our author by any adequate and unprejudiced judge. I speak with more direct reference to his elegies, which were all written in that interval of his life immediately under our review, and which, evidently composed with the most entire affection, are executed on the whole with the most complete success. He was particularly fond in his youth, as he tells us himself, of " the smooth elegiac poets, whom, both for the pleasing sound of their numerous writing, which in imitation he found most easy and most agreeable to nature's part in him; and for their matter, which what it is there be few who know not, he was so allured to read, that no recreation came to him better welcome.""

But of the elegiac writers Ovid seems to have been his favourite and his model. We may sometimes discover Tibullus in his

That Cowley was capable of writing Latin poetry with classical purity would be attested by his beautiful epitaph on himself, if even this short composition were not injured by the intrusion of one line of Cowleian quaintness and conceit.

"Nam vita gaudet mortua floribus."