And painted shells along fome winding shore Catch with indented folds the glancing fun. He had spoken in the former of

-the thymy vale

Where oft enchanted with Socratic founds

Iliffus pure devolved his tuneful ftream

In gentler murmurs.

The thought of a river listening to eloquence is but trite, and therefore fufficiently spread; but not content with the image, he has in the later work added Boreas and Orithyía to the dramatis perfonæ.

-Where once beneath

That ever-living plantane's ample boughs

Iliffus by Socratic founds detain'd

On his neglected urn attentive lay,

While Boreas lingering on the neighbouring steep

With beauteous Orithyía his love-tale

In filent awe suspended.

Sometimes however we meet with a happier image: the following is very picturesque,

Of Tyne, and ye moft ancient woodlands where

Oft as the giant flood obliquely ftrides

And his banks open

The following description of universal or primitive beauty, though somewhat too awful for a Venus, is ftriking, and merits preservation,

He, God moft high, Page 130 to

-and owns her charms, Page 134.

On the whole, though we may not look upon AKENSIDE as one of those few born to create an era in Poetry, we may well confider him as formed to shine in the brightest; we may venture to predict that his work, which is not formed on any local or temporary subject, will continue to be a claffic in our language; and we fhall pay him the grateful regard which we owe to genius exerted in the cause of liberty and philosophy, of virtue and of taste.

THE

DESIGN.

THERE are certain powers in human nature which feem to hold a middle place between the organs of bodily fenfe, and the faculties of moral perception they have been called by a very general name, The Powers of Imagination. Like the external fenfes, they relate to matter and motion; and, at the fame time, give the mind ideas analogous to thofe of moral approbation and diflike. As they are the inlets of fome of the most exquifite pleasures with which we are acquainted, it has naturally happened that men of warm and fenfible tempers have fought means to recall the delightful perceptions which they afford, independent of the object which originally produced them. This gave rise to the imitative or defigning arts; fome of which, as

painting and sculpture, directly copy the external appearances which were admired in nature; others, as mufic and poetry, bring them back to remembrance by figns univerfally established and underftood.

But these arts, as they grew more correct and deliberate, were of courfe led to extend their imitation beyond the peculiar object of the imaginative powers; especially poetry, which, making use of language as the inftrument by which it imitates, it confequently becomes an unlimited representative of every species and mode of being. Yet, as their intention was only to exprefs the objects of imagination, and as they still abound chiefly in ideas of that class, they of course retain their original character; and all the different pleasures which they excite, are termed, in general, Pleafures of Imagination.

The design of the following poem is to give a view of these in the largest acceptation of the term;

fo that whatever our imagination feels from the agreeable appearances of nature, and all the various entertainment we meet with either in poetry, painting, mufic, or any of the elegant arts, might be deducible from one or other of thofe principles in the conftitution of the human mind, which are here established and explained.

In executing this general plan, it was necessary first of all to distinguish the Imagination from our other faculties; and in the next place to characterize thofe original forms or properties of being, about which it is converfant, and which are by nature adapted to it, as light is to the eyes, or truth to the understanding. These properties Mr. ADDISON had reduced to the three general claffes of greatness, novelty, and beauty; and into these we may analyse every object, however complex, which, properly speaking, is delightful to the imagination. But fuch an object may also include many other fources of pleasure; and its beauty, or novelty, or