at their own hideous braying, are no better than asses; critics in general are venomous serpents, that delight in hissing, and some of them who have got by heart a few technical terms, without knowing their meaning, are no other than magpies. I myself, who have crowed to the whole town for near three years past, may perhaps put my readers in mind of a dunghill cock; but as I must acquaint them that they will hear the last of me on this day fortnight, I hope they will then consider me as a swan, who is supposed to sing sweetly in his dying moments.

MOTTO ON A CLOCK,

WITH

2 TRANSLATION BY THE EDITOR.

QUÆ lenta accedit, quam velox præterit hora!
Ut capias, patiens esto, sed esto vigil!

Slow comes the hour: its passing speed how great! Waiting to seize it-vigilantly wait!

CONCLUSION.

Astanti sat erit si dicam sim tibi curæ:

Forsitan et nostros ducat de marmore vultus
Nectens aut Paphiâ myrti, aut Parnasside lauri
Fronde comas, at ego securâ pace quiescam.

MILTONI MANSUS.

I shall but need to say be yet my friend:
He too perhaps shall bid the marble breathe
To honour me, and with the graceful wreathe
Or of Parnassus, or the Paphian Isle

Shall bind my brows-But I shall rest the while.

COWPER'S TRANSLATION.

THOUGH it seems unnecessary to enumerate the many public compliments, that have been paid by a variety of writers to the poetical excellence of Cowper, I must not fail to notice a private tribute to his merit, transmitted to me by the kindness of a distant friend.

In the form of a letter to an accomplished author of Ireland, it comprises a series of extensive observations on the poetry of my departed friend; observations so full of taste and feeling, that I hope the judicious writer will, in a season of leisure, revise, extend, and convert them into a separate monument to the memory of the poet, whom he is worthy to praise.

Being favoured with the liberty of using, in this publication, the manuscript I have mentioned, I selected from it a passage relating both to Milton and to Cowper, as an introduction to a proposal in honour of the two illustrious and congenial poets,

with which I promised to close this address to the public.

After many forcible remarks on the moral spirit of poetry, and a quotation from Lowth on its end and efficacy, the animated critic proceeds in the following words.

"The noblest benefits and delights of poetry can be but rarely produced, because all the requisites for producing them so very seldom meet. A vivid mind, and happy imitative power, may enable a poet to form glowing pictures of virtue, and almost produce in himself a short-lived enthusiasm of goodness. But although even these transient and factitious movements of mind may serve to produce grand and delightful effusions of poetry, yet when the best of these are compared with the poetic productions of a genuine lover of virtue, a discerning judgment will scarcely fail to mark the difference. A simplicity of conception and expression; a conscious and therefore unaffected dignity; an instinctive adherence to sober reason, even amid the highest flights; an uniform justness, and consistency of thought; a glowing, yet temperate ardour of feeling; a peculiar felicity, both in the choice and combination of terms, by

which even the plainest words acquire the truest character of eloquence, and which is rarely to be found, except where a subject is not intimately known, bnt cordially loved; these I conceive are the features peculiar to the real votary of virtue, and which must of course give to his strains a perfection of effect never to be attained by the poet of inferior moral endowments.

I believe it will be readily granted, that all these qualities were never more perfectly combined than in the poetry of Milton. And I think too there will be little doubt, that the next to him, in every one of these instances, beyond all comparison; is Cowper. The genius of the latter did certainly not lead him to emulate the songs of the Seraphim. But though he pursues a lower walk of poetry than his great master, he appears no less the enraptured votary of pure unmixed goodness. Nay perhaps he may in this one respect possess some peculiar excellences, which may make him seem more the bard of Christianity. That divine religion infinitely exalts, but it also deeply humbles the mind it inspires It gives majesty to the thoughts, but it impresses meekness on the manners, and diffuses tenderness through.