There are weeds in it, but, I think, no poisonous or offensive plants.

I shall next desire you to take down the works of PRIOR, a poet whose fame is indeed somewhat obscured by time, but who has just claims to a reader's attention. You will find his versification generally melodious, and well varied in its pauses; his diction elegant and animated, and his ideas copious and poetical. He is apt to run into prolixity, and the subjects of many of his serious pieces are such as would afford you little entertainment; for what is less interesting than the incense, bestowed upon royal and titled personages, after they have ceased to be the living objects of a respect which, perhaps, always belonged more to their stations than to themselves? When these temporary pieces, and others which I cannot with propriety recommend to your perusal, are abstracted, Prior's works will shrink to a small compass.

His "Henry and Emma" is too celebrated among amatory compositions not to de

mand your notice. The story belongs to an older writer, but has been so much adorned and amplified by Prior, that it may almost pass for an original production. He has, however, spun it rather too fine, and has assigned to it a refinement of manners and sentiment which destroys all the costume of the age in which the scene is laid. Yet if you can overcome the distaste you will naturally feel for the hard and unfair trials to which Emma is subjected, and her too fond compliance with unreasonable requisitions, you will not fail to derive pleasure from the beauty of the poetry.

The poem of "Solomon" is the author's principal work of the serious kind, and it is certainly no ordinary performance. You will not read it as a guide either in natural or moral philosophy, for in these points it has many defects; nor is the general inference, "all is vanity," a maxim which it is practically useful to inculcate. Though a voluptuous monarch missed his way in the

pursuit of happiness, it does not follow that private virtue and wisdom may not attain such a share of it as is permitted to man in his present imperfect condition: at least, all things are not equally vain, and reason has sufficient scope for exercising a choice. But comfortless as the doctrine of human misery appears, it has always been a favourite topic with rhetoricians and poets, who seem to have found in it a source of that sublime which consists in dark and awful ideas. Prior has dwelt upon it with unusual energy, and the following moral climax upon the subject is truly poetical:

Happy the mortal man, who now at last
Has thro' this doleful vale of misery past;
Who to his destin'd stage has carried on
The tedious load, and laid his burthen down;
Whom the cut brass, or wounded marble, shows
Victor o'er life and all her train of woes!
He, happier yet, who privileg'd by fate
To shorter labour, and a lighter weight,
Receiv'd but yesterday the gift of breath,
Order'd t-omorrow to return to death.
But O! beyond description happiest he,
Who ne'er must roll on life's tumultuous sea;

E

Who, with blest freedom, from the general doom
Exempt, must never force the teeming womb,
Nor see the sun, nor sink into the tomb!

To give any sense to this latter clause, the notion of a pre-existent state must be admitted, which has met with several grave assertors, though apparently little conformable to reason or revelation.

The most pleasing part of the poem of "Solomon," is that in which the loves of the Jewish king with the Egyptian maid, and with Abra, are described. The contrast between the two females is finely drawn; and the empire gradually established over the royal lover by the gentle and complying Abra is an instructive piece of moral painting.

It is possible that this poem may tire you before you have got through the three books: yet the matter is well varied, and the narration is skilfully broken by sentiBut it is Prior's fault ment and reflection.

that he cannot resist an occasion to amplify; and he often indulges in a trite ser

monizing strain, which all the splendour of his language does not prevent from becoming tedious. You will observe here and there in his verse a quick succession of triplets, which have an unpleasant effect on the ear by breaking the regularity of the measure, and seem merely a luxuriance of the faulty redundance of his style.

I shall not set you to read any of his prolix compositions called Odes, in which he celebrates William and Anne, or laments for Mary. Neither the subjects, nor his manner of treating them, would probably interest you.

But I wish it were easy for me to direct your eye to the best of his smaller pieces, which are unfortunately interspersed among so much inferior and so much improper matter, that many pages must be turned over to get at them. I will, however, point out a few, which you may find by the help of the table of contents.

Prior has given us some of the best specimens of those short amatory poems in stan