It appears to me that Burns never made an assignation of pleasure or friendship, without feeling that the tints of the sky, and the natural scenery around him, were prominent ingredients in his enjoyment. This is one striking feature among the many exquisite, charms of Gray's Elegy. All the characteristics, every leading event of the rustic's life, which are delineated with such admirable feeling, and such vigorous and living touches, are connected with, and marked out by some image of surrounding nature. Thus "the breezy call of incense-breathing morn," (one of the finest lines in the whole body of English, or any, poetry) "the twittering swallow;" the "woods bowing to the axe," &c. &c. (all of which are too familiar to every reader to be here particularized,) so soften and smooth the melancholy created by the affecting ideas of mortality and earthly oblivion, as to make us in love with a peaceful obscurity, and hang with benevolent and tender hearts over the "short and simple annals of the poor."

This was also the vital charm of the poetry of Cowper, who says, speaking of the country,

"I never fram'd a wish, or form'd a plan,
That flatter'd me with hopes of earthly bliss,
But here I laid the scene!"

But it has been doubted, and justly doubted,

whether descriptions of this kind will long interest without much intermixture of sentiment and moral remark. Man must form an important part of the picture; and to develope its operations on him will always give it its highest interest.

I will venture to say, that no ambitious verbal delineation, no unchaste and gorgeous heaping together of imagery, no laboured combination of objects, will gain the approbation of judges, or the sympathy of those, who have a genuine taste. They, whose writings are dictated by artifice and imitation, want those infallible directors in selecting and combining their materials, which are to be found in the voluntary impulses of the head and the heart endowed with genius. These mockingbirds of poetry catch perhaps distinct parts of the songs of their masters with tolerable exactness; but being insensible of the flow of soul, by which they have been produced, they jumble them together in an association so unnatural, as to retain no part of the charms which the originals possessed. We see similar defects every day exhibited in pictures; we see glaring colours, distorted invention, and incredible toil: but all is vain; and whatever the mob may pronounce, the eye of skill turns away from them unaffected, except with disgust. In the mean time the real painter combines without effort;

embodies the unsought visions of his fancy; and meets delight in every cultivated spectator, and a mirror in every well-formed bosom.

The test, which I have now, and often before, mentioned, I believe to be infallible, if applied to the merits either of poetry or painting. It will shew where lies the radical defect of the multitudes of second-rate rhymers, who follow at the heels of the few poets of every age. It will account for the similitude of the outward forms of their productions; and the marked dissimilitude of the souls which animate them. In the first a secret power carries us along with them in every line; in the others it is vox et præterea nihil.

Let us instance in a poetess lately dead. Where lies the charm of those little poems of Mrs. Smith, which she has entitled SONNETS? Is it in description? We shall find many among her cotemporaries, whose descriptions are more abundant, more uncommon, and more splendid than hers! But are they equally natural? Do they seem equally to breathe the freshness and vigour of original feeling? And is the association such as equally to command the sympathy of the reader?-Is it in sentiment? Perhaps few among her rivals exhibit sentiments less recondite, or even less free from some appearance of triteness. But have they the effect of

triteness in her? No: because they evidently spring from the fulness of a pure, a pathetic, and an overflowing heart.

The well-spring of natural eloquence was never yet tedious or insipid. The unsophisticated ideas, whose vividness shines through the language in which they are clothed, possess a permanent attraction; and though they are such as have appeared to the world a thousand times before, still continue to delight. Stupid critics analyse, and the charm is gone; they separate the parts, and find nothing in them. We may say with Burns,

These "pleasures are like poppies spread;
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow-falls in the river,
A moment white, then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,

That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow's lovely form,
Evanishing amid the storm."g

But the charm will be renewed; and real poetry will always delight, as it re-appears, in spite of critics and analysers; while all the rules of writing,

Tam O'Shanter.

and all the praise of the mechanical judges, will not preserve a production, where the soul of poetry is wanting. A simple, touching, and vivid description of the scenery of Nature, is an ingredient which has never been known to fail in giving permanent interest to a composition.

Dec. 15, 1808.