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PASSIONATE AND DESCRIPTIVE SONGS.

THE Poet's rapturous descriptions of beauty, with the expression of his warm sensations and emotions, are the subjects of this class of song-writing.

Its models exist in the classical remains of Lyric poetry, and all the praise the moderns can here expect, must arise from imitating with success these examples of perfection.

The sublime and beautiful of nature, were first combined with the elegance and refinement of art, by the Grecians: and this superiority in their poetry, and the other fine arts, entitled them to distinguish the rest of the world from themselves, as Barbarians. Their Roman

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conquerors, first by their arms, and then by their borrowed arts, obtained a share in the honourable exclusion. Among these people, even simple nature was graceful, and ornament was elegant and magnificent. Glaring splendour reigned in the East, and terrible sublimity in the North, but grace and dignity belonged to Greece and Rome alone. Fancy, in her wildest flights, could in them restrain herself within the limits of harmony and proportion. Even superstition here wore a graceful aspect. While the Deities of other nations were present to their minds in the horrid forms of cruel rage and gigantic deformity, they gave divinity to the sublime and beautiful conceptions. of their poets and painters. These they embodied with suitable symbols and attributes; and the enthusiastic votary worshipped the God of his own enraptured imagination. There is no circumstance in which the genius of these people shows itself more strongly than in the character of these fancy-formed divinities.

Besides those particularly distin

guished by the title of the Graces, there were many whose attributes expressed the different shades and variations of whatever is elegant and graceful. Their Venus was the abstract idea of all these united-she was grace and beauty itself, and parent of every thing lætum et amabile -gladsome and lovely. With the charming image of this ideal excellence in their minds, the poets of Greece and Rome selected every pleasing object from the whole compass of nature, and carefully separated them from every thing disgustful and incongruous. From a crowd of surrounding images they knew how to choose such as were not only intrinsically beautiful, but suitable to their subject; and they knew when to drop all ornament, and recur to simple nature. They distinguished with the nicest judgment between the purposes of elevating the fancy, and interesting the heart, and could give full force to each, without confounding and mixing their effects.

In the species of Lyric poetry which we are now to consider, both these de

signs have their place. The poetical description of a fair form requires the comparison of every kindred object of delight, and the richest colouring that art can bestow. The expression of emotions, on the other hand, must be conducted upon a simple plan; the feelings of the soul must declare themselves in artless touches of nature, and the real symptoms of passion; and the poet's hand must only appear in the delicacy of his strokes, and the softness and harmony of his versification.

Sappho, the genuine favourite of Venus, has given us a perfect model of the passionate song. She poured forth her whole soul in those amorous odes, of which time has indeed left us very scanty remains, but such as will ever be the finest examples of elegance and sensibility. The joyous Anacreon succeeded, but with a different turn of sentiment. His lyre was tuned rather to gaiety than tenderness, and his Venus was rather the easy companion of a bacchanalian, than the object of delicate and refined emotions.

In Horace, the passionate warmth of Sappho, the easy gaiety of Anacreon, and a superior strain of fancy and poetical enthusiasm proper to himself, are united; but on the whole, he is less frequently tender, than gay, or sublime. Among the Romans, the elegiac poets chiefly excelled in the natural and simple pathetic, and Tibullus is the purest example of this kind of writing. His flowing, elegant, and unadorned style, sweetly corresponds with the tender sentiments of complaining love, and some of the most affecting touches of nature that ever were expressed, have dropt from his pen. Ovid, though thoroughly acquainted with the passion of love, and abounding with warm and natural descriptions of it, was in general too much under the dominion of a lively fancy, and too fond of brilliant expression, to be long a pathetic writer. If he had composed in the Lyric form, his pieces would have resembled our next class of witty and ingenious songs, more nearly than those of any ancient Lyric poet.

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