What wayward boy

Disdains to yield thee joy for joy?
Soon shall he court the bliss he flies;
Soon beg the boon he now denies,
And, hastening back to love and thee,
Repay the wrong with extacy.

In the Pygmalion, a lyrical scene, he has made an effort equally vain, to represent the impassioned eloquence of Jean Jaques Rousseau.

In his shorter poems, there is too frequent a recurrence of the same machinery, and that, such as it needed but little invention to create. Either the poet himself, or some other person, is introduced, musing by a stream or lake, or in a forest, when the appearance of some celestial visitant, muse, spirit, or angel, suddenly awakens his attention.

Soft gleams of lustre tremble through the grove, And sacred airs of minstrelsy divine

Are harp'd around, and flutt'ring pinions move.
Ah, hark! a voice, to which the vocal rill,
The lark's extatic harmony is rude;
Distant it swells with many a holy trill,

And,

Now breaks wide warbling from yon orient cloud.
Elegy 2.

But hark! methinks I hear her hallow'd tongue!
In distant trills it echoes o'er the tide;
Now meets mine ear with warbles wildly free,
As swells the lark's meridian extacy.

Ode vi.

After the extatic notes have been heard, all vanishes away like some figure in the clouds, which

Even with a thought,

The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct
As water is in water.

His abstractions are often exalted into cherubs and seraphs. It is the "cherub Beauty sits on Nature's rustic shrine;" "heaven-descended Charity;" "Constancy, heaven-born queen;" Liberty, "heaven-descending queen." Take away from him these aërial beings and their harps, and you will rob him of his best treasures.

He holds nearly the same place among our poets, that Peters does among our painters. He too is best known by

The angel's floating pomp, the seraph's glowing grace;

and he too, instead of that gravity and depth of tone which might seem most accordant to his subjects, treats them with a lightness of pencil that is not far removed from flimsiness.

In the thirteenth Ode, on the late Duchess of Devonshire, the only lady of distinguished rank to whom the poets of modern times have loved to pay their homage, and in the sixteenth, which he entitles Palinodia, he provokes a comparison with Mr. Coleridge. One or two extracts from each will shew the

difference between the artificial heat of the schools

and the warmth of a real enthusiasm.

Art thou not she whom fav'ring fate
In all her splendour drest,

To show in how supreme a state

A mortal might be blest?
Bade beauty, elegance, and health,
Patrician birth, patrician wealth,

Their blessings on her darling shed;
Bade Hymen, of that generous race
Who freedom's fairest annals grace,

Give to thy love th' illustrious head.

Light as a dream, your days their circlets ran,
From all that teaches brotherhood to man

Mason.

Far, far removed; from want, from hope, from fear,
Enchanting music lull'd your infant ear,
Obeisant praises sooth'd your infant heart:
Emblasonments and old ancestral crests,
With many a bright obtrusive form of art,
Detain'd your eye from nature; stately vests,
That veiling strove to deck your charms divine,
Were your's unearn'd by toil.

Coleridge, Ode to Georgiana, Duchess of Gloucester.

Say did I err, chaste Liberty,

When, warm with youthful fire,

I gave the vernal fruits to thee,

That ripen'd on my lyre?

When, round thy twin-born sister's shrine

I taught the flowers of verse to twine

And blend in one their fresh perfume;
Forbade them, vagrant and disjoin'd,
To give to every wanton wind

Their fragrance and their bloom?

Mason.

Ye clouds, that far above me float and pause,
Whose pathless march no mortal may controul !
Ye ocean waves, that, whereso'er ye roll,
Yield homage only to eternal laws!

Ye woods, that listen to the night-birds singing,
Midway the smooth and perilous steep reclin'd;
Save when your own imperious branches swinging,
Have made a solemn music of the wind!
Where, like a man belov'd of God,

Through glooms, which never woodman trod,
How oft, pursuing fancies holy,

My moonlight way o'er flow'ring weeds I wound, Inspir'd beyond the guess of folly,

By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound! O, ye loud waves, and O, ye forests high,

And O, ye clouds, that far above me soar'd!
Thou rising sun! thou blue rejoicing sky!
Yea, every thing that is and will be free,
Bear witness for me wheresoe'er ye be,
With what deep worship I have still adored

The spirit of divinest liberty.

Coleridge. France, An Ode.

The Elegy written in a churchyard in South Wales,

is not more below Gray's.

Of eagerness to obtain poetical distinction he had much more than Gray; but in tact, judgment, and learning, was exceedingly his inferior. He was altogether a man of talent, if I may be allowed to use the word talent according to the sense it bore in our old English; for he had a vehement desire of excellence, but wanted either the depth of mind or the industry that was necessary for producing anything that was very excellent.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

OLIVER, the second son of Charles and Anne Goldsmith, was born in Ireland, on the 10th of November, 1728, at Pallas, in the Parish of Forgany or Forney in the County of Longford. By a mistake made in the note of his entrance in the college register, he is represented to have been a native of the county of Westmeath.

His father, who had before resided at Smith-hill in the county of Roscommon, (which has by some been erroneously said to be the birth-place of his son, Oliver,) removed thence to Pallas, and afterwards to his Rectory of Kilkenny West, in the county of Westmeath; and in the latter of these parishes, at