GORICAL. Allegorical they certainly arc, so far as that term may be applied to the personification of abstract ideas, though figurative would perhaps have been a more proper term: but they do not seem to have an equal claim to the epithet descriptive; by which we generally understand a delineation of some portion of real nature. Few of the Odes of COLLINS are of this cast, which indeed does not belong so properly to the nature of the Ode; but they are in the high spirit of pure Poetry.

Their

beginning is commonly abrupt and bold; often a

spirited apostrophe :

"Thou to whom the world unknown

"With all its shadowy shapes is shewn!"

Sometimes it is in the interrogative;

“Who shall awake the Spartan fife?"

The language is highly figurative, sometimes obscure! the measure is various; the versification in general easy and flowing, and in many passages wrought up to all the harmony the English language is capable of exhibiting.

The first of these compositions, To PITY, is chiefly remarkable for the sweetness and tenderness congenial to the subject. Pity is represented as being sent into the world to bind the wounds and sooth the sorrows of man,

"When first Distress with dagger keen

"Broke forth to waste his destin'd scene."

The eyes of dewy light is an expression peculiarly happy; but the personification of Distress does not seem equally accurate, since Distress is commonly used for the sensation felt by the person afflicted, not for misfortune itself. The mention of OrWAY, born as well as COLLINS, near the Arun, probably suggested to his melancholy and indignant mind an analogy in their fates, which he has forborne to express. They both of them were the objects of pity, from that circumstance in which a liberal mind would least wish to become so, pecuniary distress. The idea of building a temple to Pity, on the walls of which should be painted a variety of

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tragic subjects, might, if the Poet had pleased, have enabled him to lengthen his ode, by enriching it with sketches to any extent.

The ODE TO FEAR is one of the finest in the collection. Nothing can be more spirited than the opening, which at once introduces the mind to all those undefined terrors which wait upon "the world

unknown." The break in the fifth line,

Ah, Fear!

ah frantic Fear! I see, I see thee near! has the happiest effect on the ear and on the mind. The hurried step, the haggard eye, the withering power of Fear, are all highly characteristic. Dunger with gigantic limbs enjoying the midnight storm, and sleeping on a loose precipice; and the ravening brood of Fate who lap the blood of sorrow, are finely imagined. It is difficult to keep intirely separate the active and passive qualities of allegorical personages: difficult to say whether such a being as Fear should be the agent in inspiring, or the victim agitated by the passion. In this Ode the latter idea prevails, for Fear

appears in the character of a nymph pursued, like DRYDEN's Honoria, by the ravening brood of Fate. She is distracted by the ghastly train conjured up by Danger, and hunted through the world without being suffered to take repose; yet this idea is somewhat departed from, when the Poet endeavours to propitiate Fear by offering her as a suitable abode, the cell where Rape and Murder dwell; or a cave, whence she may hear the cries of drowning seamen. She then becomes the power who delights in inflicting fear. But perhaps the reader is an enemy to his own gratification, who investigates the attributes of these shadowy beings with too nice and curious an eye. In his reference to the goblins of Midsummer eve, the Poet shews that disposition to take advantage of the traditionary superstitions of his country, which he afterwards indulged more fully in his Ode on the Highland Superstition, a piece he did not live to finish. The division of this Ode into Epode and Antistrophe is no advantage

to it. The change of measure is so violent from the Lyric to the Elegiac, that in fact they make two different Poems; and the terms themselves not being supported, as among the ancients, by any adaptation of musical accompaniments, are in our Poetry totally unmeaning. The complimentary valediction, so often imitated from MILTON, And I, O Fear, will dwell with thee, is in this instance but a compliment; for however a man might be content to have his days tinged with the soft influence of a penseroso-melancholy; he could not, for any reward, wish to subject himself habitually to the distracting emotions of such a passion as Fear.

The ODE TO SIMPLICITY is chiefly distinguished by a smoothness and uniformity of melody, adapted to the sober nature of the subject. It chiefly insists on the power of Simplicity in touching the heart, and its necessary connection with Liberty: the latter, though a sentiment we have early imbibed, is probably imaginary. The Poet is obliged