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nowned Grecian or Roman which antiquity can produce. The modern ode and the fong are in general diftinguishable by their fubject, by the different degree of elevation and ornament in the language, and by a greater length and irregularity in the measure of the former, which is not adapted to vocal mufic. Yet as thefe diftinctions are rather relative than abfolute, it is eafy to fee that they may approach each others limits fo as to render it dubious under which class they range, which would be the case with many of Horace's odes if converted to English poems.

WE are now prepared to make use of the general deduction of the progrefs of the mind through the different stages of poetical compofition, formerly attempted, in forming an arrangement of fongs into a few diftinct claffes.

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THE rude original paftoral poetry of our country furnishes the first class in the popular pieces called ballads. Thefe confift of the village tale, the dialogue of ruftic courtship, the defcription of natural objects, and the incidents of a rural life. Their language is the language of nature, fimple and unadorned; their story is not the wild offspring of fancy, but the probable adventure of the cottage; and their fentiments are the unftudied expreffions of paffions and emotions common to all mankind.

NATURE, farther refined, but ftill nature, gives the fecond clafs of pieces containing the fentimental part of the former, abstracted from the tale and rural landfcape, and improved by a more ftudied observation of the internal feelings of paffion and their external fymptoms. It is the natural philofophy of the mind, and

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the description of fenfations. Here love appears in all its various forms of defire, doubt, jealoufy, hope, defpair; and fuggefts a language, rich, ftrong, and figurative. This is what may ftrictly be called the pathetic in poetry.

THE third clafs is formed upon an artificial turn of thinking, and the operation of the fancy. Here the fentiments arife from cool reflexion and curious fpeculation, rather than from a prefent emotion. They accordingly require enlivening by ingenious comparison, striking contrast, unexpected turns, a climax finishing in a point, and all the pleafing refinements of art which give the denomination of ingenious and witty to our conceptions. Some effential diftinctions will appear in this clafs arifing from the various kinds of wit; but they all agree in the circumftance of springing rather from fancy than paffion, and conB4 fequently

fequently of exciting pleasure and furprize rather than the fympathetic emotions.

IT is obfervable that it is this clafs alone which answers the idea Mr. Phillips gives of fong-writing in his little effay; and hence he has been betrayed into a little inconfiftency; for while he compares fong-writing in general to the gay and amorous fpecies of antient Lyric poetry, he refers us to the French fongs as examples of perfection, which are almoft folely of the witty and ingenious kind, and totally different from most of the remains of antiquity. In particular the little epigrammatic fong which he there cites and tranflates, is fo entirely diffimilar to the celebrated piece of Sappho which he has fo happily made his own, that it is wonderful the diftinction did not ftrike him.

I SHALL juft farther remark with regard

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to the proposed arrangement of our collection, that when genius is left to itself without fixed laws to conduct it, each different fpecies of writing is fo apt by imperceptible gradations to slide into the next in kindred, that it is frequently impoffible for the critic to preferve his claffes, pure and free from mixture, without a too fcrupulous rejection of pieces really beautiful though fomewhat faulty in regularity. The reader will easily perceive, and I hope make proper allowances for several inftances of equivocal arrangement, which from this cause I have not been able to. avoid.

II.

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