With eyes up-raised, as one inspired,
Pale Melancholy sate retired,

And, from her wild sequester'd seat,
In notes by distance made more sweet,

Pour'd through the mellow horn her pensive soul:
And, dashing soft from rocks around,

Bubbling runnels join'd the sound;

Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole,
Or o'er some haunted stream, with fond delay,
Round an holy calm diffusing,

Love of peace, and lonely musing,

In hollow murmurs died away.

But O! how alter'd was its sprightlier tone,
When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue,
Her bow across her shoulder flung,

Her buskins gemm'd with morning dew,

Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung,
The hunter's call to Faun and Dryad known!

The oak-crown'd sisters, and their chaste-eyed Queen,'
Satyrs and Sylvan Boys were seen,

Peeping from forth their alleys green :

Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear;

And Sport leapt up and seized his beechen spear. Last came Joy's ecstatic trial:

He, with viny crown advancing,

First to the lively pipe his hand address'd;

But soon he saw the brisk-awakening viol,

Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best ;
They would have thought who heard the strain
They saw, in Tempé's vale, her native maids,
Amidst the festal sounding shades,

To some unwearied minstrel dancing,

While as his flying fingers kiss'd the strings,
Love fram'd with Mirth a gay fantastic round:
Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound ;
And he, amidst his frolic play,

As if he would the charming air repay,

Shook thousand odours from his dewy wings.

O Music! sphere-descended maid,
Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid!
Why, goddess! why, to us denied,
Lay'st thou thy ancient lyre aside?
As, in that loved Athenian bower,
You learn'd an all-commanding power,
Thy mimic soul, O Nymph endear'd,
Can well recall what then it heard ;
Where is thy native simple heart,
Devote to Virtue, Fancy, Art?

1 The Dryads and Diana.

THE PASSIONS.

Arise, as in that elder time,
Warm, energetic, chaste, sublime!
Thy wonders, in that god-like age,
Fill thy recording Sister's1 page—
'Tis said, and I believe the tale,
Thy humblest reed could more prevail,
Had more of strength, diviner rage,
Than all which charms this laggard age;
E'en all at once together found,
Cecilia's mingled world of sound-
O bid our vain endeavour cease;
Revive the just designs of Greece:
Return in all thy simple state!
Confirm the tales her sons relate!

329

MARK AKENSIDE.

(1721-1770.)

A SUBSTANTIAL butcher in Newcastle was the father of Akenside, and the fastidious poet had the folly to be ashamed of the humbleness of his origin. At the age of sixteen he was the author of pieces of great merit in the Gentleman's Magazine. His parents were dissenters, and Mark was sent to the University of Edinburgh to be educated for the Presbyterian ministry. He entered, however, the ranks of medicine, and, after a course of study at Edinburgh and Leyden, he received, in 1744, the degree of M.D. from the latter university. His great poem, "The Pleasures of Imagination," notwithstanding the abstruse character of the subject, was received with unbounded applause. He settled as a physician at Northampton; but, finding the practice in that district already occupied, he removed to London, where he spent the remainder of his life. A handsome annuity, generously allowed him by his friend Mr. Dyson, maintained him in comfort, and his practice increased. Besides his poetry, he published several medical works, said to be still regarded with respect. He died of putrid fever in 1770.

Akenside's manners were formal and precise to an extent that bordered on the ludicrous: his features were manly and expressive; his temper irritable, yet kind and benevolent: he was a brilliant and pleasing companion. As a poet he possesses singular talent in description and in the expression of metaphysical abstractions; his versification is sounding and magnificent. No writer may be more recommended as an instructor in the classic graces of a polished phraseology. His poem is largly quoted in the ethical lectures of Dr. Thomas Brown.

Akenside's Odes, except the "Hymn to the Naiads," which is full of classical grandeur and beauty, are of no great merit.

1 Poetry: the allusion is to Orpheus and Amphion.

2 Cecilia was the patron saint of music, honoured as a martyr since the fifth

century.

3 In Smollett's Peregrine Pickle, Akenside is the doctor who gives the feast after the manner of the ancients.

FROM THE PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book I.

TENDENCIES OF THE SOUL TOWARDS THE INFINITE.

SAY, why was man so eminently raised
Amid the vast creation; why ordain'd
Through life and death to dart his piercing eye,
With thoughts beyond the limit of his frame;
But that the Omnipotent might send him forth
In sight of mortal and immortal powers,
As on a boundless theatre, to run

The great career of justice; to exalt
His generous aim to all diviner deeds;

To chase each partial purpose from his breast:
And through the mists of passion and of sense,
And through the tossing tide of chance and pain,
To hold his course unfaltering, while the voice
Of Truth and Virtue, up the steep ascent

Of Nature, calls him to his high reward,

The applauding smile of Heaven? Else wherefore burns In mortal bosoms this unquenchéd hope,

That breathes from day to day sublimer things,

And mocks possession? wherefore darts the mind,
With such resistless ardour to embrace
Majestic forms; impatient to be free,
Spurning the gross control of wilful night;
Proud of the strong contention of her toils;
Proud to be daring? Who but rather turns
To heaven's broad fire his unconstrainéd view,
Than to the glimmering of a waxen flame?

Who that, from Alpine heights, his labouring eye
Shoots round the wide horizon, to survey

Nilus or Ganges rolling his bright wave

Through mountains, plains; through empires black with shade

And continents of sand; will turn his gaze

To mark the windings of a scanty rill

That murmurs at his feet? The high-born soul
Disdains to rest her heaven-aspiring wing
Beneath its native quarry. Tired of Earth
And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft
Through fields of air; pursues the flying storm;
Rides on the vollied lightning through the heavens;
Or, yoked with whirlwinds and the northern blast,
Sweeps the long tract of day. Then high she soars
The blue profound, and hovering round the Sun,
Beholds him pouring the redundant stream
Of light; beholds his unrelenting sway
Bend the reluctant planets to absolve

The fated rounds of time. Thence far effused

FROM THE PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 331

She darts her swiftness up the long career
Of devious comets; through its burning signs
Exulting measures the perennial wheel

Of Nature, and looks back on all the stars,
Whose blended light, as with a milky zone,
Invest the orient. Now amazed she views
The empyreal waste, where happy spirits hold,
Beyond this concave heaven, their calm abode;
And fields of radiance, whose unfading light
Has travell'd the profound six thousand years,
Nor yet arrives in sight of mortal things.
Even on the barriers of the world untired
She meditates the eternal depth below;
Till half recoiling, down the headlong steep
She plunges; soon o'erwhelm'd and swallow'd up
In that immense of being. There her hopes
Rest at the fated goal. For from the birth
Of mortal man, the sovereign Maker said,
That not in humble nor in brief delight,
Not in the fading echoes of Renown,

Power's purple robes, nor Pleasure's flowery lap,
The soul should find enjoyment: but from these
Turning disdainful to an equal good,

Through all the ascent of things enlarge her view,
Till every bound at length should disappear,
And infinite perfection close the scene.'

DR. OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

(1728-1774-)

GOLDSMITH'S poetical works are limited, but they are exquisite in their kind; he is one of the pioneers who broke down the artificial barriers which convention had erected against a natural literature. He was the son of a humble Irish curate, and was born and spent his youthful years in the county of Longford. He received his education at the university of Dublin, and for a short time studied in Edinburgh and in Leyden. Suddenly quitting the latter city, although in utter poverty, he resolved to make the tour of Europe. His fortunes on the Continent were singular and various; from a passage in the "Traveller," he seems to have often earned, by his flute, a supper and bed from the peasants. He returned to England in the same poverty; but, acquiring the friendship of Johnson, the critic's advice to publish his "Traveller' raised Goldsmith to a high rank of poetical celebrity. His comedies and other publications followed; the poet was enriched, but his irregular and careless habits, and his generous disposition, kept him in perpetual embarrassment. He possessed much of the warm-hearted merits of his countrymen, but perhaps more of their faults. He was, like Gay, at

1 This theme is a favourite both with poets and philosophers: the extract would form an excellent subject of exercise in parallel passages.

once the pet and the butt of his associates, among whom he numbered Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the other members of that brilliant intellectual circle. He died in 1774, leaving about £2000 of debt.

Goldsmith's two principal poems, "The Traveller" and the "Deserted Village," belong to the highest order of descriptive poetry. His ballad of "Edwin and Angelina" is an exquisite specimen of its class. His best comedy, "She Stoops to Conquer," is still a favourite; his miscellaneous prose works comprise "An Inquiry into the present state of Polite Learning in Europe;" "The Vicar of Wakefield," one of the most delightful of domestic novels; and various essays, including those which form "The Citizen of the World." His compiled histories of England, Greece, and Rome, abridgments which have long formed standard school text books, but have little merit beyond the grace of style; they were merely task-work for the booksellers. His "Animated Nature" was published posthumously. Every year has added to the popularity of Goldsmith; his works are published in every form, and copious lives of the poet have been written.

FROM THE TRAVELLER.

SWISS LIFE.

-TURN we to survey

Where rougher climes a nobler race display,
Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansions tread,
And force a churlish soil for scanty bread :

No product here the barren hills afford

But man and steel, the soldier and his sword: