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Shall canopy the shrine. There's not a flower,
That hangs the dewy head, and seems to weep,
As pallid blue-bells, crow-tyes and marsh lilies,
But I'll plant here, and if they chance to wither,
My tears shall water them; there's not a bird
That trails a sad soft note, as ringdoves do,
Or twitters painfully like the dun martlet,
But I will lure by my best art, to roost

And plain them in these branches. Larks and finches Will I fright hence, nor aught shall dare approach This pensive spot, save solitary things

That love to mourn as I do.

How cold and lifeless are these pretty lines, when compared to the "wench-like words," of the young princes, which suggested them.

If he be gone he'll make his grave a bed
With female fairies will his tomb be haunted,
And worms will not come to thee.

Arv. With fairest flow'rs,

Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor
The azured hare-bell, like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,
Out-sweeten'd not thy breath: the ruddock would
With charitable bill (O bill, fore-shaming
The rich-left heirs, that let their fathers lie
Without a monument!) bring thee all this;

Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none,
To winter-ground thy corse.

This is grief, seeking to relieve and forget itself in fiction and fancy; the other, though the occasion required an expression of deeper sorrow, is a mere pomp of feeling.

His blank verse in the English Garden has not the majesty of Akenside, the sweetness of Dyer, or the terseness of Armstrong. Its characteristic is delicacy; but it is a delicacy approaching nearer to weakness than to grace. It has more resemblance to the rill that trickles over its fretted channel, than to the stream that winds with a full tide, and “ warbles as it flows." The practice of cutting it into dialogue had perhaps crippled him. As he has made the characters in his plays too attentive to the decorations of the scene-painter, so in the last book of the English Garden he has turned his landscape into a theatre, for the representation of a play. The story of Nerina is too long and too complicated for an episode in a didactic poem. He will seldom bear to be confronted with those writers whom he is found either by accident or design to resemble. His picture of the callow young in a bird's-nest is, I think, with some alteration, copied from Statius.

Her young meanwhile

Callow and cold, from their moss-woven nest
Peep forth; they stretch their little eager throats
Broad to the wind, and plead to the lone spray

Their famish'd plaint importunately shrill.

(English Garden, b. 3.)

Volucrum sic turba recentum,

Cum reducem longo prospexit in æthere matrem,
Ire cupit contra, summâque e margine nidi
Extat hians; jam jamque cadat ni pectore toto
Obstet aperta parens et amantibus increpet alis.
(Theb. lib. x. 458.)

Oppian's imitation of this is happier.

Ως δ' οπότ' ἀπτήνεσσι φέρει βόσιν δ ̓ ὀρταλίχοισι
Μήτηρ, εἰαρινὴ Ζεφύρου πρωτάγγελος ὄρνις,
Οἱ δ'ἁπαλὸν τρύζοντες ἐπιθρώσκουσι καλιῇ,
Γηθόσυνοι περὶ μητρὶ, καὶ ἱμείροντες ἐδωδῆς
Χεῖλος ἀναπτύσσουσιν· ἅπαν δ ̓ ἐπὶ δῶμα λέληκεν
Ανδρὸς ξεινοδόχοιο λίγα κλάζουσι νεοσσοις.

(Halieut. l. iii. 248.)

Hurd, in the letter he addressed to him on the Marks of Imitation, observed, that the imagery with which the Ode to Memory opens, is borrowed from Strada's Prolusions. The chorus in Elfrida, beginning

Hail to thy living light,

Ambrosial morn ! all hail thy roseate ray :

is taken from the Hymnus in Auroram, by Flaminio.

His Sappho, a lyrical drama, is one of the few attempts that have been made to bring amongst us that tuneful trifle, the modern Opera of the Italians.

It has been transferred by Mr. Mathias into that language, to which alone it seemed properly to belong. Mr. Glasse has done as much for Caractacus by giving it up to the Greek. Of the two Odes, which are all, excepting some few fragments, that remain to us of the Lesbian poetess, he has introduced Translations into his drama. There is more glitter of phrase than in the versions made, if I recollect right, by Ambrose Phillips, which are inserted in the Spectator, No. 222 and 229; but much less of that passionate emotion which marks the original. Most of my readers will remember that which begins,

Blest as the immortal Gods is he,
The youth who fondly sits by thee,
And hears and sees thee, all the while,
Softly speak and sweetly smile.

It is thus rendered by Mason:

The youth that gazes on thy charms,
Rivals in bliss the Gods on high,
Whose ear thy pleasing converse warms,
Thy lovely smile his eye.

But trembling awe my bosom heaves,

When placed those heavenly charms among;

The sight my voice of power bereaves,

And chains my torpid tongue.

Through every thrilling fibre flies

The subtle flame; in dimness drear
My eyes are veil'd; a murmuring noise
Glides tinkling through my ear;

Death's chilly dew my limbs o'erspreads,
Shiv'ring, convuls'd, I panting lye;
And pale, as is the flower that fades,
I droop, I faint, I die.

The rudest language, in which there was anything of natural feeling, would be preferable to this cold splendour. In the other ode, he comes into contrast with Akenside.

But lo! to Sappho's melting airs

Descends the radiant queen of love;
She smiles, and asks what fonder cares

Her suppliant's plaintive measures move.
Why is my faithful maid distrest?
Who, Sappho, wounds thy tender breast?
Say, flies he? soon he shall pursue :
Shuns he thy gifts? he soon shall give:
Slights he thy sorrows? he shall grieve,
And soon to all thy wishes bow.

Akenside, b. 1, Ode 13.

This, though not unexceptionable, and particularly in the last verse, has yet a tenderness and spirit utterly wanting in Mason.

What from my power would Sappho claim?
Who scorns thy flame?

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