the very perfection of amorous allegiance. In "The Garland" a touching moral is deduced with great elegance from a circumstance well adapted to poetical description. The "Lady's Looking-glass" may rank with this in subject, though not written in stanzas. "The female Phaeton" is a piece of great sprightliness, wrought to an epigrammatic point, founded, like Waller's Phoebus and Daphine, upon a classical allusion. The extravagance of "set the world on fire" would be admired at a time when men of wit and gallantry thought they could not go too far in complimenting a lady. Among the pieces called ballads, by which were meant a species of narrative songs in a familiar and humorous style, you will be amused with "DownHall," and "The Thief and Cordelier." It is mortifying that the talent for which Prior is particularly famous, that of telling a story with ease and pleasantry, should have been exercised upon such topics as absolutely to preclude a young lady from enjoying enjoying it. I can only venture to give you a taste of his manner by "the English Padlock," which is written with his characteristic vivacity, and contains a very good moral. You cannot at present be prepared to relish his comico-philosophical poem of Alma ;" and I think we have already dwelt long enough upon the works of an author, whose beauties are of a kind not the most favourable to the formation of a correct taste. LETTER V. WE will next, my dear Mary, turn to an author, one of whose praises it is, never to have written "a line which, dying, he would wish to blot"the moral and ele gant ADDISON. He ranks, indeed, much higher as a writer of prose than of verse, yet he first came into notice for his talents in the latter capacity. He had the fortune to live at a time when the union of poetry with loyalty bore a high value, and his praises of William and Marlborough were rewarded with pensions and public employments. The subjects of these pieces probably will not much recommend them to you; yet the second, entitled "The Campaign," retains considerable celebrity among poems of its class. It is composed with care, and supports an uniform and polished dignity: several of its passages even rise to a degree of sublimity. The simile of the destroying angel, to whom Marlborough at the battle of Blenheim is compared, has been much admired: So when an angel by divine command An objection has been made against this simile, that it too nearly resembles the primary object; for the Angel and Marlborough are both represented as performing a task of destruction under the command of a superior, and both are rational beings exerting similar mental qualities. But if this circumstance be a deduction from the ingenuity of the thought, it is none from its grandeur, or from the value of the parallel as enhancing the idea of the poet's hero. No greater conception of a chief in battle can be formed, than that of a superior being, in tranquil security, directing the the furious movements of a resistless force, and intent only upon executing the commission with which he is charged. The "Letter from Italy" has long held a distinguished place among descriptive poems. It possesses the advantage of local topics well adapted to poetry; for nature and art seem to contend in decorating the happy region which is its subject: there is little, however, of the enthusiasm of genius in Addison's sketches, and his pencil seems rather guided by cool reflection than ardent emotion. The praise of liberty is the theme on which he is most animated, yet his encomiums on it are vague and uncharacteristic. The "goddess heav'nly bright, Profuse of bliss and pregnant with delight," has no attributes to distinguish her from any other beneficent deity. Of his miscellaneous pieces, none is so worthy of attention as that addressed "to Kneller on his Picture of the King." The parallel between the heathen gods and a |