poet, because he was deeply conscious that his own CAMPAIGN, that gazette in rhyme, contained no strokes of fuch genuine and fublime poetry as the conclufion before us.

IT is one of the greatest and most pleasing arts of defcriptive poetry, to introduce moral sentences and inftructions in an oblique and indirect manner, in places where one naturally expects only painting and amusement. We have virtue, as POPE remarks, * put upon us by furprize, and are pleased to find a thing where we should never have looked to meet with it. I muft do a noble English poet the juftice to observe, that it is this particular art that is the very distinguishing excellence of COOPER'S-HILL; throughout which, the descriptions of places, and images raifed by the poet, are ftill tending to fome hint, or leading into fome reflection, upon moral life, or political inftitution; much in the fame manner as the real fight of fuch fcenes and profpects is apt to give the mind a

* Iliad. B. 16. in the notes: Ver. 465.

com

compofed turn, and incline it to thoughts and contemplations that have a relation to the object. This is the great charm of the incomparable ELEGY written in a Country Church-Yard. Having mentioned the ruftic monuments and fimple epitaphs of the fwains, the amiable poet falls into a very natural reflection :

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleafing anxious being e'er refign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the chearful day,
Nor caft one longing lingring look behind?

Or this art POPE has exhibited fome fpecimens in the poem we are examining, but not fo many as might be expected from a mind fo ftrongly inclined to a moral way of writing. After fpeaking of hunting the hare, he immediately fubjoins, much in the fpirit of Denham,

Beafts urg'd by us their fellow beasts pursue,
And learn of man each other to undo *.

Where he is describing the tyrannies formerly exercised in this kingdom,

Cities laid wafte, they ftorm'd the dens and caves,

He inftantly adds, with an indignation becoming a true lover of liberty,

For wifer brutes were backward to be flaves*.

BUT I am afraid our author in the following paffage has fallen into a fault very uncommon in his writings, a reflection that is very fetched and forced;

far

Here waving groves a chequer'd scene display, And part admit, and part exclude the day; As fome coy nymph her lover's warm address Nor quite indulges, nor can quite repress +. Bohours would rank this comparison among false thoughts and Italian conceits; fuch particularly as abound in the works of Marino. The fallacy confifts in giving defign and artifice to the wood, as well as to the coquette; and in putting the light of the fun and the warmth of a lover on a level.

* Ver. 50.

+ Ver. 16.

A PATHETIC

A PATHETIC reflection, properly introduced into a descriptive poem, will have greater force and beauty, and more deeply intereft a reader, than a moral one. When POPE therefore has defcribed a pheasant shot, he breaks out into a very masterly exclamation;

Ah! what avail his gloffy varying dyes,
His purple creft, and fcarlet-circled eyes,
The vivid green his fhining plumes unfold,
His painted wings, and breaft that flames with gold *.

THIS exquifite picture heightens the diftress, and powerfully excites the commiferation of the reader. Under this head, it would be unpardonable to omit a capital, and, I think, the most excellent example extant, of the beauty here intended, in the third Georgic of Virgil. The poet having mournfully defcribed a fteer ftruck with a pestilence, and falling down dead in the middle of his work, artfully reminds us of his former fervices;

* Ver. 115.

+ Ver. 525.

F

Quid

Quid labor aut benefacta juvant? Quid vomere terras
Invertiffe graves *?

This circumstance would have been fufficient, as it raised our pity from a motive of gratitude; but with this circumftance the tender Virgil was not content; what he adds therefore of the natural undeviating temperance of the animal, who cannot have contracted disease by excess, and who for that reason deferved a better fate, is moving beyond compare:

Atqui non Maffica Bacchi

Munera, non illis epulæ nocuere repofte!
Frondibus, et victu pascuntur fimplicis herbæ ;
Pocula funt fontes liquidi, atque exercita curfu
Flumina, nec fomnos abrumpit cura falubres.

OF English poets, perhaps, none have excelled the ingenious Mr. Dyer in this oblique instruction, into which he frequently steals imperceptibly, in his little defcriptive poem entitled GRONGAR HILL, where he difpofes

By the epithet GRAVES Virgil infinuates, after his manner, the difficulty and laboriousness of the work.