gloom. The effects which the paffions produce upon the body, would alfo prove a happy fource of the defcription of emotions. Thus, the fluttering pulfe, the changing colour, the feverish glow, the failing heart and the confufed fenfes, being natural and invariable fymptoms of the paffion of love, would foon be obseryby the poet, and fuccefsfully used to heighten his description. Hitherto all is fimple and natural, and poetry so far from being the art of fiction, is the faithful copyist of external objects and real emotions. But the mind of man cannot long be confined within prescribed limits; there is an internal eye constantly stretching its view beyond the bounds of natural vifion, and fomething new, fomething greater, more beautiful, more excellent, is required to gratify its noble longing. This eye of the mind is the imagination-it peoples. the world with new beings, it embodies

abstract

abstract ideas, it fuggefts unexpected refemblances, it creates first, and then prefides over its creation with abfolute sway. Not lefs accurately and philofophically, than poetically, has our great Shakespeare described this faculty in the following lines.

The Poet's eye in a fine phrenzy rolling

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And as imagination bodies forth

The form of things unknown, the Poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to aery nothing
A local habitation and a name.

THE most effential differences in poetical composition may be referred to the circumftance of its turning upon nature or fiction, and on this will depend its fitnefs or unfitness to produce peculiar effects. In general, whatever is defigned to move the paffions cannot be too natural and fimple. It is alfo evident that when

the profeffed design of the poet is to paint the beauties of nature and the rural landfcape of paftoral life, he must give as great an air of reality as poffible to his piece, fince a bad imitation neceffarily produces difguft. On the other hand, when the aim is to elevate and furprize, to gratify a love of novelty and the pleafing luxury of indulging the fancy, all the powers of fiction must be fet at work, and the imagination employed without controul to create new images and discover uncommon resemblances and connexions. To pursue our instance taken from the paffion of love; the poet who wishes rather to please and furprize than to move, will ranfack heaven and earth for objects of brilliant and unufual comparison with every circumstance relating to the paffion itself or its object. He will not value fentiment as the real offspring of an emotion, but as fufceptible of ingenious turns,

striking

ftriking contrafts and pleafing allufions. He will not compofe from the heart but the head, and will confult his imagination rather than his fenfations. This quality is peculiarly termed wit, and a just taste for it is never acquired without a confiderable degree of national refinement. Pieces of wit are therefore later in their date than any others.

THIS brief account of the progrefs of poetry in general being premifed, let us proceed to a nearer inspection of our subject.

In attempting to fix a meaning to the word fong, the first idea which strikes us arifes from its name, fignifying fomething to be fung. We fhall difcufs this a little at large.

THE union of mufic with

poetry muft

appear

P

appear extremely natural. We find it to have taken place univerfally in the uncultivated state of all nations, and to have continued partially in the moft refined. In all languages the words expreffing vocal mufic have been alfo used indifcriminately to fignify poetry; and though we at prefent confider fuch expreffions as figurative, there is no doubt but they were originally natural. The facred name of song was not then proftituted to a fucceffion of unmeaning founds tortured into mufic through the odious pipe of an equivocal mutilated animal; it was a general term to exprefs all that the fifter Mufes of poetry and melody could combine to delight the ear and ravish the heart. This enchanting union is now in great measure diffolved, yet I will venture to affert that it was not poetry but her less fentimental companion music who began the separation. The luxury of artificial harmony,