"Him have we seen the greenwood side along,
While o'er the heath we hied, our labour done;
Oft as the woodlark pip'd her farewell song,
With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun :-'

And,

"There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year,

By hands unseen, are showers of violets found : The redbreast loves to build, and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground!—'

though almost unobjectionable in themselves, and indeed very beautiful, as pieces of description, probably was, least the descriptive part, which retarded the action of this latter part of the poem, might offend by its length, and interrupt by unnecessary images, the simplicity and unity of the composition. Dr. Blair observes with justice, "That

* I have said "almost unobjectionable;" because I have some doubts, whether the third line of the first stanza,

"Oft as the woodlark pip'd her farewell song,"

is, either in the thought or expression, quite suited to the character of the person who is supposed to make the reflection. I may also venture to suggest, whether the expression so well described in the following stanza, would be likely to be apparent to the rustic, or could be so clearly explained by him:

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,

Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove;
Now drooping, woful-wan, like one forlorn,

Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love."

All the other stanzas of the speech are simple and exquisitely beautiful.

it is a great beauty in Milton's L'Allegro, that it is all alive and full of persons :"* and this observation the critic might have extended, with equal justice, to all his poetry.

I do not mention this feature in the poetry of Gray, as his peculiar praise; because the general effect of natural scenery, or the impression of certain objects related to it, is to suggest to the mind, by their grandeur, extent, and solemnity; or by awakening ideas of health, content, and the domestic tranquillity, which we justly associate with such scenes; a train of moral feelings; upon which depend many pleasing remembrances, many powerful affections, many hopes, many fears, and many images of happiness past or to come :

Such seems to be the general effect of natural scenery; however the liveliness, or duration of the impression may depend on the relative powers of the exciting cause. But in situations of peculiar grandeur and sublimity, on the summit of some lofty mountain, where the eye commands a prospect bounded only by the imperfect powers of human vision; or in the opposite situation, such as may be seen in the bosom of a mountainous country, amidst overhanging cliffs and torrents; in the lone

* See Blair's Lectures, vol. iii. p. 157, and Huntingford's Apology for Monostrophics, p. 198.

liness of a sea view, with all its wild accompaniments of sight and sound; the moral feeling becomes so strong, from the unusual impression made by greatness, distance, and elevation, that it effaces, for a time, the parent-cause, and occupies the mind itself. The poets therefore who want a ground-work for reflections of this nature, have selected some remarkable situation, which might suggest greater variety of thought and imagery, than they could elsewhere command. Denham hints at this circumstance, though he expresses it with his usual quaintness of manner :

"No wonder if advantaged in my flight,
From taking wing from this auspicious height,
Through untraced ways and airy paths I fly,
More boundless in my fancy, than my eye."

"I must do," says Dr. English poet the justice to

Warton,*
* 66 a pleasing
observe, that it is this

particular art that is the very distinguishing excellence of Cooper's Hill. Throughout which, the description of places and images, raised by the poet, are still tending to some hint, or leading into some particular reflection, upon moral life, or political institution; much in the same manner, as the real sight of such scenes, and prospects, to give the mind a composed turn, and incline it to thoughts and contemplations that have a relation to the object. This is the great charm of the

* See Warton's Essay on Pope, vol. i. p. 31.

is apt

incomparable Elegy written in a Country Churchyard."

In addition to the remark of Dr. Warton, I may observe that the moral and religious sentiments in the poems of Gray, derive their effect from the perfect propriety of their situation, and their intimate connexion with the subject. They are not unskilfully inserted, or laboriously accumulated, or ostentatiously displayed; not merely sprinkled on the surface of the poem, but growing out of it, as an essential part of its structure and substance. They express the result of those impressions which the reader himself has already felt; and which produce great effect, when the mind has been prepared by the incident, to delight in the reflection.

Such, then, is that mental progress, in the course of which, if I may use the expression, the moral landscape, reflected from the natural one, becomes painted on the mind: an example presents itself in that just and elevated sentiment that closes the Progress of Poesy; in which the result of the whole poem may be said to be concentrated; and the last impression which the mind receives from the subject, is what leaves with it the noblest recollections of an art, before which the vulgar distinctions of wealth and birth and power sink into insignificance:

"Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way, Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate,

Beneath the good how far, but far above the great.”

Dr. Johnson has observed, that the Bard promotes no truth, moral or political. The Bard is certainly not written for the professed or ostentatious display of any moral truth; but I may with confidence assert, that it could not produce the effect which it does, if it had only delighted us with the display of the imagination, and had not impressed its moral tendency on the mind: and I must remark, that ill would that poet perform the office which he undertakes, if his poetry produced no moral effect upon the minds of his readers; if it had no tendency to ennoble the feeling, to elevate the sentiment, to soften the passions, to breathe its finer spirit into the soul; and by raising it to purer contemplations, detach it from those low and sordid objects, that at once degrade its office, and impair its nature.

The tendency of The Bard' is to show the retributive justice that follows an act of tyranny and wickedness; to denounce on Edward, in his person and his progeny, the effect of the crime he had committed in the massacre of the Bards; to convince him, that neither his power nor situation. could save him from the natural and necessary consequences of his guilt; that not even the virtues which he possessed, could atone for the vices with which they were accompanied :

66

'Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,

Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail.”