have heard of fairies, and their dances, and even of tapers, gold, and gems, from the ballads of his native country. In the second book of the poem, there are some fine stanzas; but the author has taken Edwin from the school of nature, and placed him in his own, that of moral philosophy, and hence a degree of languor is experienced by the reader.-The above remarks on the most celebrated of Dr. Beattie's works I have transcribed from the seventh volume of Campbell's British Poets. They convey the sentiments of one of the best poets of the present age, on one of the brightest ornaments of the last. At the request of several of his friends, Dr. Beattie was induced, in the year 1776, to prepare for the press a new edition of the Essay on Truth,' to which he added several original Essays. This work was splendidly printed in quarto, and published by subscription entirely for his own benefit. The price was a guinea, and the list of subscribers, which amounted to four hundred and seventy-six, was enriched with the titles of many persons of the highest rank in the kingdom, and with the names of all the most distinguished literary characters of the time. The number of copies subscribed for amounted to seven hundred and thirty-two. The receipts must therefore have been considerable, and to Beattie a very beneficial supply, who was by no means in affluent circumstances, his pension being only two hundred a-year, and his professorship never being equal to that sum. On his return to Scotland it was proposed that he should be removed to some situation in the University of Edinburgh; but he had then many personal ene mies, the zealous friends of Hume, whom he was accused of having too severely treated in his writings; and he preferred the kindness of his old friends, and the quiet of Aberdeen, to a more lucrative and conspicuous appointment in the metropolitan university.In the same generous disregard of temporalities he declined entering holy orders, and accepting a living in the church of England, which had been offered to him through Dr. Porteus, on the part of the Bishop of Winchester. He thought that by continuing a layman, and refusing the emoluments that might accrue to him however, was very properly the work of female powers, as the act of spinning the thread of life is another my. thology. Theft, is always dangerous; Gray has made weavers of slaughtered bards by a fiction outrageous and incongruous. They are then called upon to 'Weave the warp, and weave the woof,' perhaps with no great propriety; for it is by crossing the woof with warp that men weave the web or piece; and the first line was dearly bought by the admission of its wretched correspondent, Give ample room and verge enough.' He has, however, no other line as bad. the The third stanza of the second ternary is commended, I think, bevond its merit. The personification is indistinct. Thirst and lunger are not alike; and their features, to make the imagery perfect should have been discriminated. We are told, in the same stanza, how 'towers are fed.' But I will no longer look for particular faults; yet let it be observed that the cde might have been concluded with an action of better example, but suicide is always to be had, without expense of thought. These odes are marked by glittering accumulations of ungraceful ornaments; they strike, rather than please; the images are magnified by affectation; the language is laboured into harshness. The mind of the writer seems to work with unnatural violence. 'Double, double, teil and trouble.' He has a kind of strutting dignity, and is tall by walking on tiptoe. His art and his struggle are too visible, and there is too little appearance of ease and nature. To say that he had no beauties would be unjust; a man like him, of great learning and great industry, could not but produce something valuable. When he pleases least, it can only be said that a good design was ill directed. His translations of Northern and Welsh Poetry deserve praise; the imagery is preserved, perhaps often improved; but the language is unlike the language of other poets. I have a soul, that like an ample shield E Dryden's Sebastian, In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical bonours. The Church yard' abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas, beginning Yet even these bones,' arc to me original: I have never seen the notions in any other place; yet he that reads them here persuades himself that he has always felt then. Had Gray written often thas, it had been vain to blame, and useless to praise him. ODES. I. ON THE SPRING. Lo! where the rosy-bosom'd Hours, Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech O'er-canopies the glade, Beside some water's rushy brink With me the Muse shall sit, and think (At ease reclined in rustic state) How vain the ardour of the crowd, How low, how little are the proud, How indigent the great! Still is the toiling hand of Care: Yet hark, how through the peopled air The busy murmur glows! The insect youth are on the wing, Eager to taste the honied spring, G And float amid the liquid noon : Some lightly o'er the current skim, Some shew their gaily-gilded trim, Quick-glancing to the sun. To Contemplation's sober eye Such is the race of man: And they that creep, and they that fly, Alike the busy and the gay But flutter through life's little day, They leave, in dust to rest. Methinks I hear in accents low The sportive kind reply: 'Poor moralist! and what art thou? A solitary fly! Thy joys no glittering female meets, On hasty wings thy youth is flown; II. ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT. Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes. "TWAS on a lofty vase's side, |