In a deep cave the trusty menials wait,

When from their hilly dens at midnight's hour, Forth rush the airy elves in mimic state,

And o'er the moonlight heath with swiftness

scour:

In glittering arms the little horsemen shine;

Last, on a milk-white steed, with targe of gold, A fay of might appears, whose arms entwine

The lost-lamented child! the shepherds bold The unconscious infant tear from his unhallowed hold.

For an account of the Fairy superstition, see the Introduction to the "Tale of Tamlané," in that elegant work called Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, yol. ii. p. 174. Second Edition.

to express a wish to have a green coat, ordered a vestment of that colour to be made, and left in his haunts. Brownie took away the green coat, but never was seen more. We may suppose, that tired of his domestic drudgery, he went in his new livery to join the fairies.

The last Brownie, known in Ettrick forest, resided in Bodsbeck, a wild and solitary spot, where he exercised his functions undisturbed, till the scrupulous devotion of an old lady induced her to bire bim away, as it was termed, by placing in his haunt a porringer of milk and a piece of money. After receiving this hint to depart, he was heard the whole night to howl and cry, Farewell to bonny Bodsbeck!" which he was compelled to abandon

for ever.'

It seems no improbable conjecture, that the Brownie is a legitimate descendant of the Lar Familiaris of the ancients.

OBSERVATIONS

ON THE

ORIENTAL ECLOGUES.

THE

HE genius of the pastoral, as well as of every other respectable species of poetry, had its origin in the East, and from thence was transplanted by the Muses of Greece; but whether from the continent of the lesser Asia, or from Egypt, which, about the æra of the Grecian pastoral, was the hospitable nurse of letters, it is not easy to determine. From the subjects, and the manner of Theocritus, one would incline to the latter opinion, while the history of Bion is in favour of the former.

However, though it should still remain a doubt through what channel the pastoral travelled westward, there is not the least shadow of uncertainty concerning its oriental origin.

In those ages, which, guided by sacred chronology, from a comparative view of time, we call the Early Ages, it appears from the most authentic historians, that the chiefs of the people employed themselves in rural exercises, and that astronomers and legislators were at the same time shep herds. Thus Strabo informs us, that the history of the creation was communicated to the Egyptians by a Chaldean shepherd.

From these circumstances it is evident not only that such shepherds were capable of all the dignity and elegance peculiar to poetry, but that whatever poetry they attempted would be of the pastoral kind, would take its subjects from those scenes of rural simplicity in which they were conversaut, and, as it was the offspring of Harmony and Nature, would employ the powers it derived from the former to celebrate the beauty and benevolence of the latter.

Accordingly we find that the most ancient poems treat of agriculture, astronomy, and other objects within the rural and natural systems.

What constitutes the difference between the Georgic and the Pastoral is love, and the colloquial or dramatic form of composition peculiar to the latter; this form of composition is sometimes dispensed with, and love and rural imagery alone are thought sufficient to distinguish the pastoral. The tender passion, however, seems to be essential to this species of poetry, and is hardly ever excluded from those pieces that were intended to come under this denomination: even in those eclogues of the Amœbian kind, whose only purport is a trial of skill between contending shepherds, love has its usual share, and the praises of their respective mistresses are the general subjects of the competitors.

It is to be lamented that scarce any oriental compositions of this kind, have survived the ravages of ignorance, tyranny, and time; we cannot doubt that many such have been extant, possibly as far down as that fatal period, never to be mentioned in the world of letters without horror, when the glorious monuments of human ingenuity perished in the ashes of the Alexandrian library.

Those ingenious Greeks, whom we call the parents of pastoral poetry were, probably, no more than imitators, that derived their harmony from

higher and remoter sources, and kindled their poetical fires at those then unextinguished lamps which burned within the tombs of oriental genius.

It is evident that Homer has availed himself of those magnificent images and descriptions so frequently to be met with in the books of the Old Testament.

And as the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament was performed at the request, and under the patronage, of Ptolemy Philadelphus, it were not to be wondered if Theocritus, who was entertained at that prince's court, had borrowed some part of his pastoral imagery from the poetical passages of those books.

In consequence of the peculiarities of the eastern style so ill adapted to the frigid genius of the north, Mr. Collins could make but little use of it as a precedent for his Oriental Eclogues; and even in his third Eclogue, where the subject is of a similar nature, he has chosen rather to follow the mode of the Doric and the Latin pastoral.

The scenery and subjects, then, of the following Eclogues alone are oriental; the style and colouring are purely European; and for this reason the author's preface, in which he intimates that he had the originals from a merchant who trades to the east, is omitted, as being now altogether superfluous.

With regard to the merit of these Eclogues, it may justly be asserted, that in simplicity of description and expression, in delicacy and softness of numbers, and in natural and unaffected tenderness, they are not to be equalled by any thing of the pastoral kind in the English language.