And Thomson ? How many stand Around the death-bed of their dearest friends, Sterne too, whose dissipation was too short-lived, completely to destroy in him the seeds of sensibility and nature, has described, in a book of which perhaps one fifth part is worth reading, the sympathies of surrounding friends, as constituting the acutest part of a dying man's anguish. Having recorded his wish to die in an inn (a species of death for which there will be few competitors,) he proceeds thus: "At home,---I know 66 it,---the concern of my friends, and the "last services of wiping my brow, and "smoothing my pillow, which the quivering hand of pale Affection shall pay 66 me, will so crucify my soul, that I shall ! Winter. "die of a distemper which my physician "is not aware of." Amongst Doctors who thus disagree, who shall settle the dispute? To a mind given to shift its views, and to sensibilities not yet properly made up, both aspects of the fact, and both impressions of the sentiment, offer themselves in turn ; and both are in turn approved. Of this vicissitude of feeling, no man is without his share. As the frame of the mind alters, so alter its likings, and its prepossession in favour of a sentiment, or its opposite. Of sentiments exclusively just, the catalogue would be but small. Relative truth is all we have a title to expect in the department of taste; of which, as no standard exists, it is vain to suppose any standard should be found. Scepticism, dangerous in philosophy, and impious in religion, urges a reasonable plea for admission into the court of criticism; of whose decisions she may tem per the severity, and diminish the selfimportance. With these mutually contradictory sentiments (to which the late Mr Savage gave the name of ambidextrous,' and of which he had made large collections from the body of English poetry that then existed,)—sentiments to which the mind makes alternate love, as the antiquary bestows his admiration, now on the Head of the medal, and now on the Reverse, the writings of all authors of fancy are replete. We recognise them, at times contradicting each other, and at times contradicting themselves. The language of the The appropriation of the word is contrary to analogy. Colliding would have been more proper. On the occasions alluded to, it is the mind that is ambidextrous; not the sentiments. Savage, whose fancy led him to form more projects than his means allowed him to execute, seems to have intended some work upon this subject. But to render the design complete, his Collections, of which I retain an indistinct idea, should have taken in prose-writers as well as poets, and other languages as well as the English. Leasowes is, that to the passionate lover, the wonted haunts of the beloved object give gratification, when from these haunts she is absent. They tell me, my favourite maid, The image is one that pleases for the time: but, reflected from the lakes of Hagley, which is only a few miles off, it meets the eye with its form inverted, and yet it pleases still. The shades of Hagley now have lost their boast.- Abandoned and alone, Without my sweet companion, can I live? ❜ There are frames of mind that suit ei ther view. It is not in poetry as in logic. Shenstone. Absense. 2 Littleton. Monody. Here two contradictories may dwell together, each of equal authority with its opposite. Though poetry may be justifiable in presenting us with opposite views, each of which may be true for the time, yet she ought to beware, when she is dealing out her universals, that she offer us not a relative in place of an absolute truth. It is in this view that Gray is censurable in the present instance. That the sympathies of friends give ease to a dying man, may be, in general, as just a sentiment as that they give him pain; that they soften his anguish, as that they point it but, here, the enunciation is didactic. The poet speaks in no character, and to no particular class, but brings forth the sentiment in the form of a position; and, considered as a position, it is not true. The third line of the stanza contains |