Thus, blest in primal innocence they live, Suffic'd and happy with that frugal fare Which tasteful toil and hourly danger give : Hard is their shallow soil, and bleak and bare; Nor ever vernal bee was heard to murmur there! Nor need'st thou blush that such false themes engage There, Shakspeare's self, with every garland crown'd, Flew to those fairy climes his fancy sheen, In musing hour, his wayward sisters found, The shadowy kings of Banq.o's fated line In scenes like these, which, daring to depart When each live plant with mortal accents spoke, Hence his warm lay with softest sweetness flows! Melting it flows, pure, murmuring, strong, and clear, And fills th' impassion'd heart, and wins the harmonious ear! MARK AKENSIDE. Born 1721-Died 1770. AKENSIDE was educated at the University of Edinburgh with the view of becoming a dissenting minister, but after wards exchanged the study of theology for that of medicine. At the age of twenty-three he published the Pleasures of the Imagination, which conferred upon him at once a high reputation as a poet. In 1748 he established himself at London as a physician, and was assisted during the early and difficult part of his career with unexampled generosity by his friend Mr. Dyson, with an allowance of three hundred pounds a year. His reputation and practice continued to increase till his death, which took place in the 49th year of his age. Akenside's poem is apparently the production of a mind well stored with philosophy and imagery collected from books, but possessing little acuteness, pathos, or originality of thought, and not accustomed to the observation of nature. Hence it is artificial and declamatory in its character. It has very little depth or tenderness of feeling, and its poetry rarely takes hold on the heart. Both the thoughts and style are stately and imposing, but the former are too apt to degenerate into bombast, and the latter becomes superfluous in its pomp of expression. His versification is regular and harmonious, his morality dignified, though rather cold, and his descriptions of the operations of genius, and of the intellectual abstract qualities, are beautiful. "The sweetness which we miss in Akenside is that which should arise from the direct representations of life and its warm realities and affections. We seem to pass in his poem through a gallery of pictured abstractions rather than of pictured things. He reminds us of odours which we enjoy artificially extracted from the flower, instead of inhaling them from its natural blossom. "In treating of novelty he is rather more descriptive; we have the youth breaking from domestic endearments in quest of knowledge, the sage over his midnight lamp, the virgin at her romance, and the village matron relating her stories of witchcraft. Short and compressed as these sketches are, they are still beautiful glimpses of reality, and it is expressly from observing the relief which they afford to his didactic and declamatory passages, that we are led to wish that he had appealed more frequently to examples from nature." THE ATTRACTIONS OF NOVELTY. CALL now to mind what high capacious powers Lie folded up in man; how far beyond The praise of mortals, may th' eternal growth Her tender blossom, choke the streams of life, Those sacred stores that wait the ripening soul, PLEASURES OF A CULTIVATED IMAGINATION. 4 Those ever-blooming sweets, which from the store To charm th' enliven'd soul! what though not all Will deign to use them. His the city's pomp, : The world's foundations, if to these the mind Will be the change, and nobler. Would the forms And rolling waves, the sun's unwearied course, The elements and seasons: all declare He meant, he made us to behold and love Whom nature's work can charm, with God himself JOHN HOME. Born 1724-Died 1808. IT was to Mr. Home that Collins addressed his romantic ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands, predicting in the opening stanza the future exhibition of those tragic powers which were afterwards displayed so remarkably in Douglass. He was born in Scotland, studied at the University of Edinburgh, and was licensed to preach the gospel in 1747. In 1750 he became minister of the church at Athelstanford, over which the poet Blair had previously presided. The tragedy of Douglass was first exhibited with great applause on the theatre in Edinburgh, and afterwards appeared with equal fame in London. It was attended in Scotland with consequences more unpleasant to the author. The Scotish presbytery esteemed it so great an outrage on the rules of propriety and religion for a clergyman to compose a tragedy for the stage, and be present at its performance, that Mr. Home judged it best to retire from his profession, and accordingly in 1758 took leave of his congregation in a deeply pathetic sermon. His own mind, it is to be feared, was more agitated by ambition, than obedient to the calls of duty. He spent the remainder of his life, which was prolonged to the age of eighty five, at London, and published many tragedies, not one of which exhibited a glimpse of the genius that conceived and executed Douglass. It is upon this tragedy that Home's literary reputation rests exclusively; and by this it will always be supported. He has displayed in it much power of the descriptive and pathetic, a good degree of fancy, a discriminating hand in the delineation, of his characters, and a style of versification, easy, regular, and sometimes strong. Its moral influence is also pure. As a whole it is simple, chaste, and grand; like an ancient Grecian temple, severe in classic beauty, amidst the corruptions of the reigning taste. |