People the bufy mead, Like fpectres fwarming to the wifard's hall; A weeping mourner, fmote with anguish fore, And fternly shakes his fceptre, dropping blood. Far from the fun and fummer gale, By the fame. In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid, Thine too thefe golden keys, immortal boy! Of horror that, and thrilling fears, Or ope the facred fource of fympathetick tears.3 Gray's Ode on the Progress of Poefy. 3 An ingenious perfon, who fent Mr. Gray his remarks anony moufly on this and the following Ode foon after they were publifhed, gives this ftanza and the following a very juft and wellexpreffed eulogy: A poet is perhaps never more conciliating than when he praises favourite predeceffors in his art. Milton is not more the pride than Shakspeare the love of their country: It is therefore equally judicious to diffufe a tenderness and a grace through the praife of Shakspeare, "as to extol in a strain more elevated and fonorous the boundless foarings of Milton's imagination." The critick has here well noted the beauty of contraft which results from the two defcriptions; yet it is further to be obferved, to the honour of our poet's judgement, that the tenderness and grace in the former, does not prevent it from ftrongly characterifing the three capital perfeâions of Shakspeare's genius; and Next Shakspeare fat, irregularly great, And turn the fouleft drofs to pureft gold: Thofe aw'd by terrors of his magick wand, The which not all their powers united might withftand. Lloy'ds Progrefs of Envy, 1751. Oh, where's the bard, who at one view And tore the leaf from nature's book. Lloyd's Shakespeare, a Poem. In the first feat, in robe of various dies when he defcribes his power of exciting terror (a fpecies of the fublime) he ceases to be diffuse, and becomes, as he ought to be, concife and energetical. MASON. Things of the nobleft kind his genius drew, And, paffing nature's bounds, was fomething more. |