ODE TO SIMPLICITY. HE measure of the ancient ballad feems to have been made choice of for this ode, on account of the subject, and it has, indeed, an air of fimplicity not altogether unaffecting. By all the honey'd store On Hybla's thymy shore, By all her blooms, and mingled murmurs dear, By her whose love-lorn woe, In evening mufings flow, Sooth'd fweetly fad Electra's poet's ear. This allegorical imagery of the honey'd store, the blooms, and mingled murmurs of Hybla, alluding to the fweetnefs and beauty of the attic poetry, has the finest and the happiest effect: yet, poffibly, it will bear a question whether whether the ancient Greek tragedians had a general claim to fimplicity in any thing more than the plans of their drama. Their language, at leaft, was infinitely metaphorical; yet it must be owned that they justly copied nature and the paffions, and fo far, certainly, they were entitled to the palm of true fimplicity: the following most beautiful speech of Polynices, will be a monument of this fo long as poetry fhall last. πολυδακρυς δ' αφικόμην Χρόνιος ιδων μελαθρα, και βωμες θεών, Ναιω, δι όσσων όμμ' έχων δακρυροῦν. Αλλ' (εκ γαρ άλγες άλγος) αν σε δερκομαι Καρα ξύρηκες, και πεπλος μελαγχιμος Εκεσαν. EURIP. But ftaid to fing alone To one diftinguish'd throne. The The poet cuts off the prevalence of Simplicity among the Romans with the reign of Auguftus, and indeed, it did not continue much longer, most of the compofitions, after that date, giving into false and artificial ornament. No more in hall or bower, The paffions own thy power, Love, only love her forceless numbers mean. In these lines the writings of the provencial poets are principally alluded to, in which fimplicity is generally facrificed to the rhapfodies of romantic love, O DE ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER. Procul! O! procul efte profani! HIS ode is fo infinitely abftracted and TH replete with high enthusiasm, that it will find few readers capable of entering into the spirit of it, or of relishing its beauties. There is a ftyle of fentiment as utterly unintelligible to common capacities as if the fubject were treated in an unknown language; and it is on the fame account that abftracted poetry will never have many admirers. The authors of fuch poems must be content with the approbation of thofe heaven-favoured geniuses, who, by a fimilarity of taste and fentiment, are enabled to penetrate the high myfteries of infpired fancy, and to pursue the loftieft loftieft flights of enthufiaftic imagination. Nevertheless, the praise of the distinguished few is certainly preferable to the applause of the undifcerning million; for all praise is valuable in proportion to the judgment of those who confer it. As the fubject of this ode is uncommon, fo are the style and expreffion highly metaphorical and abstracted; thus the fun is called the rich-hair'd youth of morn," the ideas are termed "the fhadowy tribes of "mind," &c. We are ftruck with the propriety of this mode of expreffion here, and it affords us new proofs of the analogy that fubfifts between language and fentiment. NOTHING can be more loftily imagined than the creation of the Ceftus of Fancy in this ode: The allegorical imagery is rich and |