And, Antony, pronouncing the funeral oration over

the dead body of Julius Cæsar;

"Still as they press he calls on all around;

"Lifts the torn robe, and points the bleeding

"wound."

It were to be wished that all the scenes which have been transferred to the canvass had been selected with as much judgment. It is not every scene that may be found in SHAKESPEAR, which illustrates SHAKESPEAR.

In 1742, while COLLINS was still a student at Magdalen College, he published his ORIENTAL, or, as they were first intitled, PERSIAN ECLOGUES. Sensible of the triteness of common Pastoral, which had become almost proverbial, the author has endeavoured to throw interest and variety into this elegant species of composition, by introducing the manners, and especially the appropriate scenery of other countries. The attempt was laudable, and the effect happy. The Oriental Eclogues have not indeed attained equal popularity with the Delias and Stre

phons of the Arcadian school, but they have always stood high in the opinion of real judges, and have opened sources of new and striking imagery which succeeding Poets have often availed themselves of. The passions of men are uniform; but, modified by the influence of climate, government, manners, and local circumstance, and accompanied with the various tints which employ the pencil of a landscape painter, they present an inexhaustible variety, from the song of SOLOMON breathing of cassia, myrrh, and cinnamon, to the Gentle Shepherd of RAMSAY, whose damsels carry their milking pails through the frost and snows of their less genial, but not less pastoral country. The province of Pastoral may in this way be enlarged to take in all the beautiful and all the grand appearances of Nature, which observation or reading may have brought the Poet acquainted with; he may sport in the vast savannahs of America; he may regale his shepherds with the bread-fruit of Otaheite, or sadden them

with the prospect of an impending eruption of Mount

Vesuvius.

The Eclogues are four in number, corresponding

to the four periods of morning, noon, evening, and midnight. SELIM, or the SHEPHERD'S MORAL, is the least interesting of the number. It has nothing dramatic in its structure, and the two similes with which it is adorned are more quaint than beautiful. It is, however, calculated to please by the purity and sweetness of its moral ideas, and serves, as it were, to prepare and put the mind in tune for virtuous sympathy with the feelings of shepherds. The personification of Chastity,

HASSAN, or the CAMEL-DRIVER, stands upon a ground of superior merit. There is a peculiar strength of painting in the opening of the Poem. The horror of a boundless desart, arid and sultry,

the intense beams of noon, the absence of all vestige of vegetation, the undulating ocean of sand swept by the rising whirlwind, present a scenery of gloomy grandeur strictly appropriate to the country. A single group appears upon the canvass, composed of laden camels, so emphatically called in the East the ships of the desart, pursuing their painful march through a cloud of dust, and the driver Hassan, with his single cruise of water, and fan made of feathers, who is represented striking his breast with his hand, according to the eastern expression of strong emotion, before he begins his complaint. The scene is highly finished, and shows what advantage might be gained to this kind of Poetry, by studying the more picturesque features of nature. This piece is a monodrame, but the apostrophe to the camels, and the introduction of the speech of Hassan's mistress, give it sufficient dramatic effect. The danger incurred in these desarts from poisonous reptiles and wild beasts is strikingly impressed:

"What if the lion in his rage 1 meet!

"Oft in the dust I view his printed feet."

The images in the two following lines seem to be borrowed from the 5th chapter of Matthew,

"The lily, Peace, outshines the silver store, And life is dearer than the golden ore."

There is a prettiness in the prayer of Zara, that the blasts of the desart might be weak as her rejected sighs, which is unworthy of the rest, COLLINS had a fine imagination, but he did not possess the language of passion. There seems also a small impropriety in Hassan's bearing the cruise of water himself, when he was master of laden camels.

The subject of the next Eclogue is truly pastoral, A young shepherdess making garlands of such flowers as, though they are the product of our gardens only, are known to grow wild in many parts of Persia, is discovered by Abbas the Great, sultan of that country, who falls in love with her, and leads her to his palace. Filled with awe, no less than pleasure,