ed that the language is pleasing; yet of the circumstances brought into view, there is no pointed and respective application to the different orders of dead that are specified. Though the sleepers are subjected to classification, and distinguished into four sets, reapers, tillers, team-drivers, and wood-cutters; and, though the rousers to morning labour are also enumerated as four; yet the departments are not set off distinctly, nor are the sounds that are to rouse characteristically appropriated to each. Neither the " twittering of the swallow," nor the "clarion of the cock," have reference to one set of sleepers more than to another: and the " echoing horn" seems to have nothing to do with any of them. What is meant by the "breezy call of incense-breathing morn," as an help to early rising, is not very plain; though this is one of the lines that it

is thought creditable to apprehend and

feel.

Thomson, indeed, has asked the following question;

Falsely luxurious, will not man arise,

And, springing from the bed of sloth, enjoy
The cool, the fragrant, and the silent hour?

I

But the motive contained in this expostulation is not physical, but moral; it is directed to those that are already awake, but who, from laziness, "continue a-bed, when they should be stirring about."

"Twitter," applied to the swallow, is one of those words whose measure and articulation are supposed to resemble what they denote. Gray found it in Dryden; and, as Thomson had done before him, took it on trust. But what

Summer.

shall we say of the " clarion of the cock?" It is, no doubt, allowed to poetry to exalt the little, by comparing it to the great; but, Sunt certi fines. To swell out an insignificant little being, by an accumulation of glaring trappings, and to compare his shrill diminutive pipe to a bold instrument of martial music, is to subject the animal as well as the description, to ridicule.-Incredulus odi.

When Cupid, in an Ode of Anacreon, gives the name of "winged dragon" to a bee, and calls the puncture received from his sting a "mortal wound," the levity of the piece, as well as the design, reconciles us to the hyperbole. In making his grey fly " wind a horn," Milton has gone fully as far as he ought. It is not enough for the justification of Gray, that his offence is not greater than Milton's ;-that" clarion" is not more to the cock, than "horn" is to the beetle. The

1

justness of poetical description has nothing to do with the doctrine of ratios. Hamlet's advice concerning chaste playing, applies equally to chaste description. There may be an "outstepping the modesty of nature" in both.

If❝ straw-built shed" be meant as descriptive of a swallow's nest, it is an affected expression, and adopted in defiance of observation. A shed is a roof or covering: the roof or covering has, in the case of a swallow's nest, nothing necessarily to do with straw; nor is it built by the swallow at all.

In the sixth stanza, it is assumed, that "the blazing hearth burns;" although it is obvious, that the hearth neither blazes nor burns; but the fire upon the hearth. But more than this might be forgiven to the picture of domestic happiness which the stanza holds out, and which is drawn with great interest, and much simplicity.

Thomson had said, in a case somewhat

similar,

In vain for him th' officious wife prepares

The fire fair blazing, and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out

Into the mingling storm, demand their sire,

With tears of artless innocence.-Alas!

Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold;
Nor friends; nor sacred home.*

Here are the same images. The blazing fire; the busy wife, plying her evening care; and the children, anxious for the return of their father, by both affectedly denominated sire. They occur also in nearly the same order. The image of the children, however, Gray has improved by the addition of a tender stroke, not in the original :

Nor climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Winter.