imagery be coloured by the clime, and we are made to feel that its inhabitants do not speak like aliens. Therefore, "Hassan, or the Camel-Driver,” is a true Oriental Eclogue-we feel that the time is mid-day-and the scene the desert. "In silent horror o'er the boundless waste The beasts, with pain, their dusty way pursue, When first from Schiraz' walls I bent my way!" True, they are mere boyish productions-but the boyhood of genius is haunted by images of beauty, and there are many such in these ecologues. "Come thou, whose thoughts as limpid springs are clear, To lead the train, sweet Modesty appear: Here make thy court amidst the rural scene, And shepherd girls shall own thee for the Queen. With thee be Chastity, of all afraid, Distrusting all, a wise suspicious maid; But man the most: not more the mountain doe Holds the swift falcon for her deadly foe. Cold is her breast, like flowers that drink the dew; A silken veil conceals her from the view. No wild desires amidst thy train be known, But Faith, whose heart is fix'd on one alone; Desponding Weakness, with her downcast eyes, And friendly pity, full of tender sighs : And Love, the last by these your hearts approve, These are the virtues that must lead to love." Collins, in riper age, would not have written these lines-but is it not well that they are written? And are they not redolent of the virtue and happiness of a golden age? And where is a lovelier line than "Their eyes blue languish and their golden hair? A more picturesque line than "No more the shepherd's whitening tents appear?" A more appalling image than "What if the lion in his rage I meet: Oft in the dust I view his printed feet?" A more poetical picture of fatigue and despair than Friend of my heart! oh! turn thee and survey, Samuel saith that the poet's "lines are commonly of slow motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants."-Sometimes they are of slow motion, and then may be applied to them Dugald Stewart's fine remark on one of the finest passages in Gray, "I cannot help remarking further, the effect of the solemn flow of the verse in this exquisite stanza, in retarding the pronunciation of the reader, so as to arrest his attention to every successive picture, till it has time to produce its proper impression. More of the charm of poetical rythm arises from this circumstance than is "But thou, O Hope, with eyes so fair, 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, Revenge impatient rose, He threw his blood-stain'd sword in thunder down, The war-denouncing trumpet took, And blew a blast so loud and dread, Were ne'er prophetic sound so full of woe. And ever and anon he beat The doubling drum with furious heat; And though sometimes, each dreary pause between, Dejected Pity at his side Her soul-subduing voice applied, Yet still he kept his wild unalter'd mien, While each strain'd ball of sight seemed bursting from his head. Thy numbers, Jealousy, to nought were fix'd, Sad proof of thy distressful state, Of differing themes the veering song was mix'd, And now it courted Love, now raving call'd on Hate. "With eyes uprais'd, as one inspir'd, Pale Melancholy sat retir'd, And from her wild sequester'd seat, In notes by distance made more sweet, Pour'd through the mellow horn her pensive soul: And dashing soft from rocks around, Bubbling runnels join'd the sound; Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole, Or o'er some haunted streams with fond delay, What music! Take any single verse or sentence of exquisite construction, where the place of every word doubles its beauty. There is no explanation can be imagined of the effect of such construction on the Mind, except that in the moment in which it passes upon every successive word, it has the recollection present to it of every word it has passed, with some doubtful yet vigilant expectation of that which is to follow. It bears along with it, in short, throughout, the complex impression of all which it has passed over, till it reaches the close; and in that beautiful, expressive, and perfect close, feels the instantaneous completion of that complex impression, which it had borne with it incomplete till that moment. It is difficult to us, indeed, to watch these processes, but there are abundant cases in which it is not difficult to demonstrate that they must have taken place. When such a passage is learnt by heart, it is evident to ourselves that it is not the mere sequence of sounds that fixes itself by reiterated impression in the memory; but the Mind, hovering, as it were, at once over the whole line, and over the succession of lines, imprints that as one in the memory which it has conceived as one, though heard in many successive impressions of sense; and even the misplacing of a word, or the substitution of a wrong one, where the verse would bear it, is often detected, not by the derangement or falsification of the sequences of sound, but by the impaired beauty of the whole. This may be observed most easily by every one in respect of the more beautiful and affecting poetry of his own language. Indeed, it may be said that the chief effect of versification depends upon this power of the mind to remember minutely and to expect exactly as it passes on. Every one who is at all sensible to this kind of harmony will be aware how his ear expects the close of the verse. He will be aware how in any majestic strain he feels that it bears him on, he feels that it draws to its close. Many of the remarkable effects of unusual versifica tion, in poets who are greatest masters of their art, may be explained by the interruption that is given to the ordinary expectation of the mind listening to the stream of sound; many by the exceeding of that expectation with the riches of an inexhaustible harmony. And as an observation of a minuter kind, we may remark, that in this harmony in the sound of verse, the mind evidently notes the minutest transitions of sound as it goes on ; the richness and numerousness of the harmony depending entirely on the constant instantaneous comparison of each successive syllable of sound, with those which have preceded it showing demonstrably that the mind bears along with it, in the midst of present impression, a constant conception of impressions immediately past. Who but Collins would have written the 'But knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll; Chill penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul. Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush un seen, And waste its sweetness on the desart air.' The two similies in this stanza certainly produce very different degrees of poetical delight. That which is borrowed from the rose blooming in solitude pleases in a very high degree, both as it contains a just, beautiful similitude; and still more, as the similitude is one of the most likely to have arisen to a poetic mind in such a situation. But the simile in the two first lines of the stanza, though it may, perhaps, philosophically, be as just, has no other charm, and strikes us immediately as not the natural suggestion of such a moment and such a scene. To a person moralizing amid the simple tombs of a village churchyard, there is, perhaps, no object that would not sooner have occurred than this piece of minute jewellery-a gem of purest ray serene, in the unfathomed caves of ocean.' In the first place, we object decidedly to the expression "this piece of minute jewellery :" "Full many a gem of purest ray serene," is a line which, whether aptly introduced or not into this description, is unexceptionable in itself-there is nothing minute in it but, on the contrary, it is a line conveying a very splendid and gorgeous image. But, passing from that, why does this image strike us in a moment as one not belonging to the moment and the scene? If it were taken by itself, perhaps it might so strike us; though we see no reason why a churchyard, however rural or simple, being a place of graves, might not suggest any idea whatever, let its wildness, depth, or vastness be what it may. But we opine that if the whole pervading and progressive spirit of the stanzas be considered, they will be felt to contain no imperfection, but finely to exemplify how emotions and passions of the mind connect ideas much more powerfully than mere conceptions or ideas ever can-as is elsewhere properly remarked by Dr Brown. The mind of the poet is here possessed with one great and sublime, though melancholy and mournful thought-the earthly extinction of virtue, power, and genius which fate had hindered from acquiring their glory on earth. Now, this is a thought which is worthy and capable of filling the whole mind. Nor can there be imagined any image or conception, however great, which would be uncongenial with it. The humble character of the village churchyard is for a while forgotten, or remembered only so faintly as to be a kind of dim accompaniment to the scene of the poet's excited imagination; and no image from the external world could be out of place, however splendid or august. The critics of the day accused Gray of borrowing the idea of his Elegy from Collins's Evening! Oh dear! And they found fault with Collins's Evening for being in blank verse. Alas! So perfect is its music that the ear never misses the rhyme-the soul forgets that there is such an artifice as rhyme; and the imagination is so gradually filled to overflowing, that it feels but thinks not of the beauty of the medium through which its visions arisethe lucid and transparent veil of inspired words. ODE TO EVENING. "If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song, May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, Like thy own solemn springs, Thy springs, and dying gales; "O nymph reserv'd, while now the brighthair'd Sun Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts, With brede ethereal wove, "Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-ey'd bat, With short shrill skriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds "As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum : Now teach me, maid compos'd, To breathe some soften'd strain, |