Corinna; Mary Queen of Scots.

-All aid is vain----ye rolling billows cease!
She seeks with you the silent arms of peace,
--Hear bold Corinna* strike her lyric string,
And bear young Pindar on her eagle wing.
--With "Lion port" and with a nervous hand,
Eliza sway'd the sceptre of her land.

--Nurs'd on the bosom of luxurious France,
The queen
of Scotland led the airy dance,
Love's softest lustre wanton'd o'er her face,

Her limbs were form'd, her actions mov'd, in
Science and Taste adorn'd her festive court,
Music and Joy and every 'wildering sport.

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grace.

Gay "laughs the morn"---the sullen night appears---
Oft after transport comes the feast of tears;
Joy strikes the viol----strains of rapture rise,
The minstrel falls---the voice of music dies.
Ah! why to pleasure should such pangs succeed,
Why wast thou, Mary,† doom'd so soon to bleed?

*It is said that Corinna was the instructor of Pindar; and often, in competition with him, bore away the prize. ↑ Who does not wish to vindicate the character of Mary, queen of Scots ? What heart has not bled over her interesting history? Who does not lament her thoughtless levities, her criminal follies? Who does not execrate the stern policy, the hardened vices of Elizabeth, which doomed to the scaffold this enchanting woman, unrivalled in loveliness, accomplishments, and distresses? Who, that has read her

Colonna; Dacier; More; Barbauld.

How sweet and musically flows that lay, Which now in murmurs softly dies away;

*

Colonna bending o'er her husband's bier,

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Breathes those sad numbers hallowed with her tear.

With active zeal, with honest thirst of fame
Hear Dacier vindicate her Homer's name.

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Hear Montague repel light Voltaire's rage,
Who like a butcher mangled Shakespeare's page.
Hear from the bosom of the pious Rowe
The tender strain and warm devotion flow.
In Woolstonecraft's strong lines behold confest
The fatal errors of the female breast.
Behold enforc'd in More's instructive page,
Lessons of virtue for this careless age.
Hear Seward weeping over Andre's grave;
And call for Cook the spirit of the wave.
To Smith's romances fairy scenes belong
And Pity loves her elegiac song.

Carter both Science and Invention own

And Genius welcomes from her watchful throne.
On Barbauld's verse the circling muses smile,
And hail her brightest songstress of the British isle.

'beautiful lamentation on her unhappy fate, does not feel the fervour and pathos of her genius?

* Criticism has called this lady the first poetess of Italy.

Dispensations of Genius.

But few can sway the boundless field of art; To few will Genius all her gifts impart.*

One, she enables on the winds to soar,

And higher regions of the air explore.
To one she gives the sov'reign power to trace
The planet, wheeling thro' the worlds of space;

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The instances are innumerable which confirm this assertion. I shall notice some, which are the most striking--Cicero, the first name on the page of antiquity, failed in his attempts at poetry.---Archimedes, whose name may stand for a large class devoted to mathematics, had little taste for any other branch of literature, than geometry. There are not a few, who would prefer the investigation of the legs and wings of the most tiny insect, to the contemplation of the brightest planet that rolls through the worlds of space! Berkeley, to the exclusion of most other employments, was for ever attempting to dig in a well without a bottom---while Gray, who, at his time, was pronounced to be the first scholar in Europe, had no taste either for mathematics or metaphysics; in a letter to his friend are contained the following sentences, "Must I plunge into metaphysics? Alas! I cannot see in the dark; Nature has not furnished me with the optics of a cat. Must I pore upon mathematics? Alas! I cannot see in too much light; I am no eagle. It is very possible that two and two make four, but I would not give four farthings to demonstrate this ever so clearly; and if these be the profits of life, give me the amusements of it." Perhaps the three modern writers who possessed the most universal genius were Leibnitz, Milton, and Haller.

Dispensations of Genius.

She digs with chymists in the deepest caves,

And bounds with seamen o'er the distant waves;
To one she gives the microscopic eye

To scan the legs and pinions of a fly;

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She leads bold Cæsar o'er the rolling flood,

Thro' trackless forests, and thro' scenes of blood:
Others she leads thro' Nature's widening range,
To mark the seasons and their ceaseless change;
To some she gives the love and power of song,
To move with strength and harmony along;
To hold the torch of Satire in their hand,
And scatter light, thro' the deluded land ;*

*Literature is much indebted to the author of the Pursuits of Literature, and to Mr. Gifford, the author of the Baviad and Mæviad, for their poems and criticisms. The pursuits of Literature is a work which discovers genius, correctness of mind, and great extent of information, and is calculated to restore true taste and true learning. While its author liberally approves the works of the true philosopher and the true poet, he points his overcoming satire against all those who would propagate false principles and false taste. Some of his opinions, on subjects of religion and criticism, I deem erroneous and unfounded. nister of the gospel I cannot, however, restrain my admiration of this author for the morality of his strains, for his defence of religion against the attacks of impiety and a new and dangerous philosophy.

As a mi

Eloquence.

While some she gives the orator's controul,
To roll their thunder o'er the prostrate soul.* 290

*Eloquence, as well as poetry, has been the inexhausti*ble subject of investigation. Which is the most proper mode of pulpit-eloquence? is a question which has been often asked, and differently answered. The Abbey Maury, in his lively and entertaining treatise, has denied their due merits to the English divines; and the English divines, on the other hand, do not sufficiently infuse into their discourses the fire and passion of the French manner. Theology has been reduced to a perfect science; there are no new truths in religion to be explored; he, therefore, who, with an accurate investigation of these truths, connects á cultivated taste and exercised imagination, and subjects these powers under the guidance of reason, will be a more agreeable and persuasive combatant for divine truth than the preacher, who, though skilled in theology, has no perception of beauty and sublimity; but who delivers trite truths in triter forms. To the pulpit, the close and indissoluble reasoning of a Locke is not adapted; were preachers to reason like him, their hearers would return from church as edified as they came there; the mind must be aided by the silence and solitude of the closet, to comprehend the chain of such arguments.

The preacher must employ other weapons than syllogism; he must observe a medium between argument and declamation; the passions, as well as the understanding, must be addressed. Declamation, without a due proportion of argument, would have no effect upon the understanding; and argument, without declamation, would have