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Oft as she went, she backward hirnid her View And bade that Crook and bleating Flock adieu ?

Published by Cadell & Davies Strand Sep 1797.

POETICAL WORKS

OF

MR. WILLIAM COLLINS :

WITH A

PREFATORY ESSAY,

BY MRS. BARBAULD.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR T. CADELL, JUN. AND W. DAVIES,
IN THE STRAND,

BY W. FLINT, OLD BAILEY.

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ON THE

POETICAL WORKS

OF

MR. WILLIAM COLLINS.

THE different species of Poetry may be reduced

under two comprehensive classes. The first includes all in which the charms of verse are made use of, to illustrate subjects which in their own nature are affecting or interesting. Such are Didactic and Dramatic compositions. Such is the Epic, where a story, a series of adventures, carries the reader on through the impulse of curiosity, and loses not its interest intirely even if translated into Prose. Such are descriptions of natural objects, where the mind recognizes with pleasure the forms and colouring it

а

admires in the various scenes and productions of the visible world. Such is, also, that moral painting of men and manners, that spontaneously approves itself to the spirit of observation, and the moral sense, that more or less are implanted in the breast of every man. Hence the Essays and Epistles of POPE have been popular among all that read. A lively representation of the passions, particularly those of Love, Terror, and Pity, commands the attention even of those who are but indifferent judges of the vehicle in which it may be conveyed. The other class consists of what may be called pure Poetry, or Poetry in the abstract. It is conversant with an imaginary world, peopled with beings of its own creation. It deals in splendid imagery, bold fiction, and allegorical personages. It is necessarily obscure to a certain degree; because, having to do chiefly with ideas generated within the mind, it cannot be at all comperhended by any whose intellect has not been exercised in similar contemplations; while the conceptions of the Poet (often highly metaphysical) are ren

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