Restor'd: behold! the well-dissembled scene "Behold! all thine again the sister-arts, "Lo! numerous domes a Burlington confess: "See! Sylvan scenes, where, Art, alone, pretends To dress her mistress, and disclose her charms: "August, around, what public works I see! Lo! the proud arch (no vile exactor's stand) As thick to view these varied wonders rose, ODE. TELL me, thou soul of her I love, Or dost thou, free, at pleasure, roam, * A creature which, of all brutes, most resembles man. -See Dr. Tyson's treatise on this animal. † Okely woods, near Cirencester. Oh! if thou hover'st round my walk, While under every well-known tree, I to thy fancied shadow talk, And every tear is full of thee; Should then the weary eye of grief, Beside some sympathetic stream, In slumber find a short relief, O visit thou my soothing dream! THE HAPPY MAN. HE's not the Happy Man, to whom is given Spring, Whose carved mountains bleat, and forests sing; For whom the cooling shade in Summer twines, While his full cellars give their generous wines; From whose wide fields unbounded Autumn pours A golden tide into his swelling stores: Whose Winter laughs; for whom the liberal gales Ev'n not at all these, in one rich lot combin'd, SONG. HARD is the fate of him who loves, Yet dares not tell his trembling pain, But to the sympathetic groves, But to the lonely listening plain. Oh! when she blesses next your shade, Ye gentle spirits of the vale, To whom the tears of love are dear, O, tell her what she cannot blame, But if, at first, her virgin fear Should start at love's suspected name, With that of friendship soothe her earTrue love and friendship are the same. SONG. For ever, Fortune, wilt thou prove Bid us sigh on from day to day, But busy, busy, still art thou, For once, O Fortune, hear my prayer, Make but the dear Amanda mine. ODE. Ο NIGHTINGALE, best poet of the grove, O lend that strain, sweet nightingale, to me! 'Tis mine, alas! to mourn my wretched fate: You, happy birds! by Nature's simple laws But we, vain slaves of interest and of pride, Dare not be blest lest envious tongues should blame: And hence, in vain I languish for my bride; Oh! how I love with thee to walk, And listen to thy whisper'd talk, Which innocence and truth imparts, And melts the most obdurate hearts. A thousand shapes you wear with ease, Thine is the balmy breath of morn, Descending angels bless thy train, Oh, let me pierce thy secret cell! TO THE REV. MR. MURDOCH, RECTOR OF STRADDISHALL, IN SUFFOLK, 1738. O mourn with me, sweet bird, my hapless flame. Thus safely low, my friend, thou canst not fall : HYMN ON SOLITUDE. HAIL, mildly-pleasing Solitude, Companion of the wise and good, But, from whose holy, piercing eye, The herd of fools and villains fly. Here reigns a deep tranquillity o'er all; AMBROSE PHILIPS. AMBROSE PHILIPS, a poet and miscellaneous who found his own juvenile pastorals undervalued, writer, was born in 1671, claiming his descent from sent to the same paper a comparison between his an ancient Leicestershire family. He received his and those of Philips, in which he ironically gave education at St. John's College, Cambridge; and, the preference to the latter. The irony was not attaching himself to the Whig party, he published, detected till it encountered the critical eye of Adin 1700, an epitome of Hacket's life of Archbishop dison; and the consequence was, that it ruined the Williams, by which he obtained an introduction to reputation of Philips as a composer of pastoral. Addison and Steele. Soon after, he made an at- When the accession of George I. brought the tempt in pastoral poetry, which, for a time, brought Whigs again into power, Philips was made a Westhim into celebrity. In 1709, being then at Copen- minster justice, and, soon after, a commissioner for hagen, he addressed to the earl of Dorset some the lottery. In 1718, he was the editor of a periverses, descriptive of that capital, which are re-odical paper, called "The Freethinker." In 1724, garded as his best performance; and these, together he accompanied to Ireland his friend Dr. Boulter, with two translations from Sappho's writings, created archbishop of Armagh, to whom he acted stand pre-eminent in his works of this class. In as secretary. He afterwards represented the county 1712 he made his appearance as a dramatic writer, of Armagh in parliament; and the places of secrein the tragedy of "The Distrest Mother," acted at tary to the Lord Chancellor, and Judge of the Pre Drury-lane with great applause, and still considered as a stock play. It cannot, indeed, claim the merit of originality, being closely copied from Racine's "Andromacque;" but it is well written, and skilfully adapted to the English stage. A storm now fell upon him relatively to his pastorals, owing to an exaggerated compliment from Tickell, who, in a paper of the Guardian, had made the true pastoral pipe descend in succession from Theocritus to Virgil, Spenser, and Philips. Pope, rogative Court, were also conferred upon him. He returned to England in 1748, and died in the following year, at the age of seventy-eight. The verses which he composed, not only to young ladies in the nursery, but to Walpole when Minister of State, and which became known by the ludicrous appellation of namby-pamby, are easy and sprightly, but with a kind of infantile air, which fixed upon them the above name. TO THE EARL OF DORSET. Copenhagen, March 9, 1709. FROM frozen climes, and endless tracts of snow, No gentle breathing breeze prepares the spring, The starving wolves along the main sea prowl, And yet but lately have I seen, ev'n here, The thick-sprung reeds, which watery marshes yield, The brittle forest into atoms flies, The crackling wood beneath the tempest bends, And by degrees unbind the wintry charm, And journeys sad beneath the dropping trees: meads: While here enchanted gardens to him rise, The birds, dismiss'd, (while you remain,) What frenzy in my bosom rag'd, And by what care to be assung'd? What gentle youth I would allure, Whom in my artful toils secure ? Who does thy tender heart subdue, Tell me, my Sappho, tell me who? Though now he shuns thy longing arms, Celestial visitant, once more A HYMN TO VENUS. From the Greek of Sappho. O VENUS, beauty of the skies, If ever thou hast kindly heard Thou once didst leave almighty Jove, A FRAGMENT OF SAPPHO. BLEST as the immortal gods is he, The youth who fondly sits by thee, And hears and sees thee all the while Softly speak, and sweetly smile. 'Twas this deprived my soul of rest, My bosom glow'd; the subtle flame In dewy damps my limbs were chill'd, 2S2 WILLIAM COLLINS. WILLIAM COLLINS, a distinguished modern poet, of disorder in his mind, perceptible to any but himwas born at Chichester, in 1720 or 1721, where his self. He was reading the New Testament. "I father exercised the trade of a hatter. He received have but one book," said he, "but it is the best." his education at Winchester College, whence he en- He was finally consigned to the care of his sister, in tered as a commoner of Queen's College, Oxford. whose arms he finished his short and melancholy In 1741, he procured his election into Magdalen course, in the year 1756. college as a demy; and it was here that he wrote It is from his Odes, that Collins derives his chief his poetical "Epistle to Sir Thomas Hanmer," poetical fame; and in compensation for the neglect and his "Oriental Eclogues;" of both which with which they were treated at their first appearpieces the success was but moderate. In 1744, he ance, they are now almost universally regarded as came to London as a literary adventurer, and va- the first productions of the kind in our language, rious were the projects which he formed in this with respect to vigor of conception, boldness and capacity. In 1746, however, he ventured to lay variety of personification, and genuine warmth of before the public a volume of "Odes, Descriptive feeling. They are well characterized in an essay and Allegorical;" but so callous was the national prefixed to his works, in an ornamented edition pubtaste at this time, that their sale did not pay for the lished by Cadell and Davies, with which we shall printing. Collins, whose spirit was high, returned conclude this article. "He will be acknowledged to the bookseller his copy-money, burnt all the un- (says the author) to possess imagination, sweetness, sold copies, and as soon as it lay in his power, in- bold and figurative language. His numbers dwell demnified him for his small loss; yet among these on the ear, and easily fix themselves in the memory. odes, were many pieces which now rank among the His vein of sentiment is by turns tender and lofty, finest lyric compositions in the language. After always tinged with a degree of melancholy, but not this mortification, he obtained from the booksellers possessing any claim to originality. His originality a small sum for an intended translation of Aristotle's consists in his manner, in the highly figurative garb Poetics, and paid a visit to an uncle, Lieutenant- in which he clothes abstract ideas, in the felicity of Colonel Martin, then with the army in Germany. his expressions, and his skill in embodying ideal The Colonel dying soon after, left Collins a legacy creations. He had much of the mysticism of poetry, of 2000l., a sum which raised him to temporary and sometimes became obscure by aiming at imopulence; but he now soon became incapable of pressions stronger than he had clear and well-defin'd every mental exertion. Dreadful depression of ideas to support. Had his life been prolonged, and spirits was an occasional attendant on his malady, with life had he enjoyed that ease which is necessary for which he had no remedy but the bottle. It was for the undisturbed exercise of the faculties, he about this time, that it was thought proper to con- would probably have risen far above most of his fine him in a receptacle of lunatics. Dr. Johnson contemporaries." |