master of poetic numbers; none who better knew

To build the lofty rhyme.

The condensed vigour, so indispensable to blank verse, the skilful variation of the pause, the masterly structure of the period, and all the occult mysteries of the art, can perhaps be best learnt from Akenside. If he could have conveyed to Thomson his melody and rhythm, and Thomson would have paid him back in perspicuity and' transparency of meaning, how might they have enriched each other!"

"I confess," said I, "in reading Akenside, I have now and then found the same passage at once enchanting and unintelligible. As it happens to many frequenters of the Opera, the music always transports, but the words are not always understood." then desired my friend to gratify us with the first book of the Pleasures of Imagination..

I

Sir John is a passionate lover of poetry, in which he has a fine taste.. He read it. with.

with much spirit and feeling, especially these truly classical lines,

Mind, mind alone, bear witness earth and heaven,
The living fountains in itself contains

Of beauteous and sublime: here hand in hand
Sit paramount the graces; here enthroned
Celestial Venus, with divinest airs
Invites the soul to never-fading joy.

"The reputation of this exquisite passage," said he, laying down the book, “is established by the consenting suffrage of all men of taste, though by the critical countenance you are beginning to put on, you look as if you had a mind to attack it."

"So far from it," said I, "that I know nothing more splendid in the whole mass of our poetry. And I feel almost guilty of high treason against the majesty of the sublimer Muses, in the remark I am going to hazard, on the celebrated lines which follow. The Poet's object, through this and the two following pages, is to establish the infinite superiority of mind over unconscious matter, even in its fairest forms. The idea is as just as the execution is beau

tiful; so also is his supreme elevation of

intellect, over

Greatness of bulk, or symmetry of parts. Nothing again can be finer, than his subsequent preference of

The powers of genius and design,

over even the stupendous range

Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres.

He proceeds to ransack the stories of the mental and the moral world, as he had done the world of matter, and with a pen dipped in Hippocrene, opposes to the latter,

The charms of virtuous friendship, &c.

*

The candid blush

Of him who strives with fortune to be just.

*

All the mild majesty of private life.

The graceful tear that streams from other's woes. Why, Charles," said Sir John, "I am you the enthusiastic eulogist

glad to find

of the passage of which I suspected you

were about to be the

saucy censurer."

"Censure,"

Censure," replied I, "is perhaps too strong à term for any part, especially the most admired part of this fine poem. I need not repeat the lines on which I was going to risk a slight observation; they live in the mind and memory of every lover

of the Muses."

"I will read the next passage, however," said Sir John, "that I may be better able to controvert your criticism:

Look then abroad through nature to the range
Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres,
Wheeling unshaken through the void immense,
And speak, oh man! does this capacious scene
With half that kindling majesty dilate
Thy strong conception, as when Brutus rose
Refulgent from the stroke of Cæsar's fate
Amid the crowd of patriots, and his arm
Aloft extending, like eternal Jove

When guilt brings down the thunder, call'd aloud
On Tully's name, and shook his crimson steel,
And bade the father of his country hail;
For lo! the tyrant prostrate in the dust,
And Rome again is free

"What a grand and powerful passage!" said Sir John.

"I acknow

"I acknowledge it," said I, "but is it as just as it is grand Le vrai est le seul beau. Is it a fair and direct opposition between mind and matter? The poet could not have expressed the image more nobly, but might he not, out of the abundant treasures of his opulent mind have chosen it with more felicity? Is an act of murder, even of an usurper, as happily contrasted with the organization of matter, as the other beautiful instances I named, and which he goes on to select? The superiority of mental beauty is the point he is establishing, and his elaborate preparation leads you to expect all his other instances to be drawn from pure mental excellence. His other exemplifications are general, this is particular. They are a class, this is only a variety. I question if Milton, who was at least as ardent a champion for liberty, and as much of a party-man as Akenside, would have used this illustration. Milton, though he often insinuates a political stroke in his great poem, always, I think, gene

ralizes: