and wherever such scenes appeared to harmonize with his disposition at the moment, the sentiments were involuntarily prompted. Numberless poetical trifles of the same kind have occurred to him, when perhaps, in his solitary rambles, he has been " chewing the food of "sweet and bitter fancy;" but they have been forgotten, as he left the places which gave rise to them, and the greatest part of those originally committed to the press were written down, for the first time, from memory. This is nothing to the public; but it may serve in some measure to obviate the common remark on melancholy poetry, that it has been very often gravely composed, when possibly the heart of the writer had very little share in the distress he chose to describe. -To But there is a great difference between natural and fabricated feelings, even in poetry :which of these two characters the poems before the reader belong, the author leaves those, who have felt sensations of sorrow, to judge. They who know him, know the occasions of them to have been real; to the public he might only mention the sudden death of a deserving young woman, with whom, "Sperabat longos beul ducere soles, "Et fido acclinis consenuisse sinu." DONHEAD, APRIL 1805. |