paintings on the mount; and you will be sensible of the elegance of description in various parts of the detail.

Your attention is next called to "The Shepherd's Week," a set of Pastorals; but some information concerning the occasion of their composition will usefully precede the perusal. I have already observed to you, that Pope's Pastorals have little other merit than the melody of their versification and splendour of their diction, and that they paint neither the scenery nor the manners of the country. They were received, however, with an applause, which seems to have excited the envy of Ambrose Philips, a cotemporary poet, who attempted to correct the public taste by a specimen of pastoral poetry written upon a plan which he conceived more suitable to this

species of composition. His pastorals were, therefore, in their language and incidents, of a much more simple and rustic cast; in which they certainly made a nearer approach to the original Greek models,

and

and gave a more natural representation of rural life. This simplicity, however, in some instances was capable of being set in a ludicrous point of view; and Pope excited a laugh against them by an ironical paper in the "Guardian.”

Gay entered the field as an auxiliary to Pope; and by way of exaggerating the ridicule thrown upon vulgar pastoral, un- . dertook to write a set of pieces in which the real manners of country clowns should be painted, without any fictitious softening. But the result was probably very different from what either he or his friends expected; for these burlesque pastorals became the most popular compositions of that class in the language. The ridicule in them is, indeed, sufficiently obvious to a cultivated reader; but such is the charm of reality, and so grateful to the general feelings are the images drawn from rural scenes, that they afforded amusement to all ranks of readers; and they who did not comprehend the jest, enjoyed them as faith

ful

ful copies of nature. Gay, as I have already remarked, was a curious observer; and whether in the streets of London, or in a Devonshire village, he noted down every thing that came in his view. Whatever he thus had stored in his memory, he brought forth in his compositions in the same mixed groups that nature herself presents, where the elegant and the vulgar, the serious and the comic, march side by side. Thus, in the Pastorals before us, while he pursues his primary design of burlesque parody, he paints rural scenes with a truth of pencil scarcely elsewhere to be met with; and even pathetic circumstances are intermixed with strokes of sportive humour. The death of Blouzelind, in the fifth pastoral, with some omissions would make a scene more touching, because more natural, than most of the lamentable tales of our modern sentimentalists. This singular combination distinguishes several of Gay's productions, especially his dramas. I shall not recommend to you his epistles, eclogues,

eclogues, tales, and other miscellaneous pieces. There is entertainment in them, but they want more selection than it is worth your while to bestow. But you will not neglect his two celebrated ballads of "All in the Downs," and ""Twas when the seas were rearing," which have been sung and repeated by the grandmothers of the present generation. He has some other pleasing pieces of the song kind; and his "Molly Mog" and "Song of Similes" are familiar in humorous poetry.

Of all Gay's works, none, however, is so well known as his "Fables," many of which have probably already come in your way as part of the juvenile library. Fable, as a poctical composition, requires an union of various excellencies in order to render it perfect. It should be ingenious in its construction, and not merely the illustration of some common moral, by attributing to brutes the actions and sentiments of men. Its descriptions should be exactly copied from nature, and include as much

as

as possible of the natural history of the animals who are made the persons of the drama. Its style of narration should be easy and sprightly, but not coarsely familiar. In the first of these qualities Gay has little claim to merit; for very few of his fables display ingenuity of invention or refinement of moral. The "Jugglers" and the "Court of Death" perhaps stand the highest in this respect. His talent for minute observation makes him often happy in description; and though his animals act like mere men, they are generally introduced with appropriate portraiture and scenery. His language is for the most part sufficiently easy without being vulgar; but it is destitute of those strokes of shrewd simplicity which so much charm in La Fontaine. As to the scope of his Fables, it is almost entirely satirical; and you will probably be surprised to find, upon consideration, how little suited many of them are to the avowed design of instructing a young prince. But moral judg

ment