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This extract, our readers will obferve, is not very favourable to Dr. Young.-Poets, Mr. Croft tells us, do not make the best parents' we cannot, however, subscribe to the truth of this obfervation, as no fatisfactory reason can, perhaps, be affigned why poets fhould not be as good parents as other men.-' -This gentleman informs us, that Philander and Narciffa, in the Night Thoughts, are Mr. and Mrs. Temple; and that the poet feems to dwell with more melancholy on their deaths than that of his wife.

In juftice to Mr. Croft it is neceffary to obferve, that he has endeavoured to affimilate his part of the work with the rest, by a careful and ftudious imitation of Dr. Johnson's style and manner, which he seems to have hit off with fome degree of fuccefs.

Our readers, however, are, by this time, we fuppofe, rather impatient for an extract from the great biographer himfelf. In a work of this nature, where every part has nearly an equal fhare of merit, it is difficult to select those which may lay claim to our. fuperior admiration. If a preference, however, must be given, we should bestow it on the lives of Pope, Addison, and Thomson, which feem to have been written con amore, and to fhine in this collection with peculiar luftre'.

The following character of Addifon, which we find at the conclufion of his life, is equally just and delicate,

As a defcriber of life and manners, he must be allowed to ftand perhaps the first of the first rank. His humour, which, as Steele obferves, is peculiar to himfelf, is fo happily diffused as to give the grace of novelty to domeftick fcenes and daily occurrences. He never outsteps the modefty of nature, nor raises merriment or wonder by the violation of truth. His figures neither divert by diftortion, nor amaze by aggravation. He copies life with fo much fidelity, that he can be hardly faid to invent; yet his exhibitions have an air fo much original, that it is difficult to fuppofe them not merely the product of imagination.

As a teacher of wifdom he may be confidently followed. His religion has nothing in it enthufiaftick or fuperftitious: he appears neither weakly credulous nor wantonly fceptical; his morality is neither dangeroufly lax, nor impracticably rigid. All the enchantment of fancy and all the cogency of argument are employed to recommend to the reader his real intereft, the care of pleafing the author of his being. Truth is fhewn fome. times as the phantom of a vifion, fometimes appears half-veiled in an allegory fometimes attracts regard in the robes of fancy, and fometimes fteps forth in the confidence of reafon. She wears a thousand dreffes, and in all is pleasing.

Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet.

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His profe is the model of the middle stile; on grave subjects not formal, on light occafions not grovelling; pure without fcrupulofity, and exact without apparent elaboration; always equable, and always eafy, without glowing words or pointed fentences. Addifon never deviates from his track to fnatch a grace; he feeks no ambitious ornaments, and tries no hazardous innovations. His page is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected fplendour.

It feems to have been his principal endeavour to avoid all harfhnefs and feverity of diction; he is therefore fometimes' verbofe in his tranfitions and connections, and fometimes defcends too much to the language of converfation; yet if his language had been lefs idiomatical, it might have loft fomewhat of its genuine Anglicifm. What he attempted, he performed; he is never feeble, and he did not wish to be energetick; he is .never rapid, and he never flagnates. His fentences have neither studied amplitude, nor affected brevity: his periods, though not diligently rounded, are voluble and eafy. Whoever wishes to attain an English ftile, familiar but not coarfe, and elegant but not oftentatious, muft give his days and nights to the vo lumes of Addifon.'

To this we will fubjoin what our author has faid of that amiable man and excellent poet, James Thomfon.

Thomfon, (fays Dr. Johnfon) as a writer, is entitled to one praife of the highest kind; his mode of thinking, and of expreffing his thoughts, is original. His blank verfe is no more the blank verfe of Milton, or of any other poet, than the rhymes of Prior are the rhymes of Cowley. His numbers, his paufes, his diction, are of his own growth, without tranfcription, without imitation. He thinks in a peculiar train, and he thinks always as a man of genius; he looks round on Nature and on Life, with the eye which Nature beftows only on a poet; the eye that diftinguishes, in every thing prefented to its view, whatever there is on which imagination can delight to be detained, and with a mind that at once comprehends the vast, and attends to the minute. The reader of the Seafons wonders that he never faw before what Thomfon fhows him, and that he never yet has felt what Thomfon impreffes.

His is one of the works in which blank verfe feems properly ufed; Thomfon's wide expansion of general views, and his enumeration of circumftantial varieties, would have been obftructed and embarraffed by the frequent interfections of the fenfe, which are neceffary effects of rhyme.

His defcriptions of extended fcenes and general effects bring before us the whole magnificence of Nature, whether pleafing or dreadful. The gaiety of Spring, the fplendour of Summer, the tranquillity of Autumn, and the horror of Winter, take in their turns poffellion of the mind. The poet leads us through the appearances of things as they are fucceffively varied by the

viciffitudes of the year, and imparts to us fo much of his own enthufiafm, that our thoughts expand with his imagery, and kindle with his fentiments. Nor is the naturalift without his part in the entertainment; for he is affifted to recollect and to combine, to arrange his discoveries, and to amplify the sphere of his contemplation.

The great defect of the Seafons is want of method; but for this I know not that there was any remedy. Of many appearances fubfifting all at once, no rule can be given why one fhould be mentioned before another; yet the memory wants the help of order, and the curiofity is not excited by fufpenfe or expectation.

His diction is in the highest degree florid and luxuriant, fuch as may be faid to be to his images and thoughts both their lustre and their fhade; fuch as invests them with fplendour, through which perhaps they are not always eafily difcerned. It is too exuberant, and fometimes may be charged with filling the ear more than the mind.

Thefe Poems, with which I was acquainted at their first appearance, I have fince found altered and enlarged by fubsequent revifals, as the author fuppofed his judgement to grow more exact, and as books or converfation extended his knowledge and opened his profpects. They are, I think, improved int general; yet I know not whether they have not loft part of what Temple calls their race; a word which, applied to wines, in its primitive fenfe, means the flavour of the foil.'

This criticism is elegant, candid, and judicious; the praife bestowed is not (as praises often are) vague, general, and indifcriminate, but founded on true taste and reafon; nor is the cenfure lefs just,

Though Dr. Johnfon's critical determinations will always be received with deference and respect, we much doubt whe ther they will be implicitly fubmitted to with regard to that great favourite of the ladies Matthew Prior, whom our biographer feems to have placed in a lower fcale of merit than is generally allotted to him. Of this poet, Dr. Johnson has taken the liberty to say, that his love-verses are not dictated by nature, and have neither gallantry nor dernefs; that his mythological allufions are defpicable; and that when he tries to act the lover without the help of his gods and goddeffes, his thoughts are unaffecting or re mote; that his Henry and Emma is a dull tedious dia, logue.

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His Poem (fays our author) on the Battle of Ramilies is neceffarily tedious by the form of the ftanza: an uniform mafs af ten lines, thirty-five times repeated, inconfequential and

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lightly

flightly connected, muft weary both the ear and the underftanding. His imitation of Spenfer, which confifts principally in I ween and I weet, without exclufion of later modes of fpeech, makes his poem neither ancient nor modern. His mention of Mars and Bellona, and his comparifon of Marlborough to the Eagle that bears the thunder of Jupiter, are all puerile and unaffecting; and yet more defpicable is the long tale told by Lewis in his defpair, of Brute and Troynovante, and the teeth of Cadmus, with his fimilies of the raven and eagle, and wolf and lion. By the help of fuch eafy fictions, and vulgar topicks, without acquintance with life, and without knowledge of art or nature, a poem of any length, cold and lifelefs like this, may be easily written on any fubject.'

He tells us afterwards, that Prior's Alma has no plan, and that his Solomon is tedious and uninterefting; and that whatever he claims above mediocrity, feems the effort of fruggle and of toil.

He has (fays he) many vigorous but few happy lines; he has every thing by purchafe, and nothing by gift; he had no nightly vifitations of the Mufe, no infufions of fentiment or felicities of fancy.'

: The legality of this fevere fentence against poor Matt. will probably be difputed in the court of criticifm by fome of his warm friends and admirers.-We fhall not, however, enter into the contention, but proceed to obferve, that our biogra phical legislator, in another part of this work, has again boldly fteered against the tide of popular opinion, by calling in queftion the tranfcendent excellence of our modern Pindar, Mr. Gray, whom he has dethroned and degraded, in the foilowing terms.

Gray's Poetry (fays he) is now to be confidered; and I hope not to be looked on as an enemy to his name, if I confefs that I contemplate it with lefs pleafure than his life.

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His ode on Spring has fomething poetical, both in the language and the thought; but the language is too luxuriant, and the thoughts have nothing new. There has of late arifen a practice of giving to adjectives, derived from fubftantives, the termination of participles; fuch as the cultured plain, the dafed bank; but I was forry to fee, in the lines of a fcholar like Gray, the bonied Spring. The morality is natural, but too ftale; the conclufion is pretty.

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The poem on the Cat was doubtlefs by its author confidered as a trifle, but it is not a happy trifle. In the firft ftanza the azure flowers that blow, fhew refolutely a rhyme is fometimes made when it cannot eafily be found Selima, the Cat, is called a nymph, with fome violence both to language and

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fenfe; but there is good ufe made of it when it is done; for of the two lines,

"What female heart can gold defpife?

What cat's averfe to fifh !"

the first relates merely to the nymph, and the fecond only to the cat, The fixth ftanza contains a melancholy truth, that a favourite has no friend; but the last ends in a pointed fentence of no relation to the purpofe; if what gliftered had been gold, the cat would not have gone into the water; and, if she had, would not lefs have been drowned,

The Profpect of Eaton College fuggefts nothing to Gray, which every beholder does not equally think and feel. His fupplication to father Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop or toffes the ball, is ufelefs and puerile, Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself. His epithet buxom health is not elegant; he feems not to understand the word, Gray thought his language more poetical as it was more from common ufe: finding in Dryden honey redolent of Spring, an expreffion that reaches the utmost limits of our language, Gray drove it a little more beyond common apprehenfion, by making gales to be redolent of joy and youth,

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Of the Ode on Adverfity, the hint was at first taken from O Diva, gratum quæ regis Antium; but Gray has excelled his original by the variety of his fentiments, and by their moral application. Of this piece, at once poetical and rational, I will not by flight objections violate the dignity.

My procefs has now brought me to the wonderful wonder of wonders, the two Sifter Odes; by which, though either vulgar ignorance or common fenfe at first univerfally rejected them, many have been fince perfuaded to think themfelves delighted. I am one of thofe that are willing to be pleased, and therefore would gladly find the meaning of the first stanza of the Progress of Poetry.

Gray feems in his rapture to confound the images of Spread ing found and running water. A ftream of mufick may be allowed; but where does mufick, however fmooth and ftrong, after having visited the verdant vales, row! down the fleep amain, fo as that rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar? If this be fid of mufick, it is nonfenfe; if it be faid of water, it is nothing to the purpose.

The fecond stanza, exhibiting Mars's car and Jove's eagle, is unworthy of farther notice. Criticifin difdains to chafe a fchool-boy to his common places.

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To the third it may likewife be objected, that it is drawn from mythology, though fuch as may be more eafily affimilated to real life. Idalia's velvet-green has fomething of cant. epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature. Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily compounded. Many-twinkling was formerly cenfured

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